Befriending
Regular contact with a caring and supportive friend is so important throughout our lives, but especially as we age and our social networks get much smaller. Our volunteer befrienders support older people in a wide range of social, emotional and practical ways. This includes:
- visiting a housebound person
- helping people with limited mobility get out into the community
- helping older people get online
- helping with odd jobs and errands
- escorting older people to appointments, social events and activities
- having fun days out together
The majority of the people we support though our befriending scheme are aged over seventy-five; although we offer the service to anyone over 60 who would benefit from a befriender.
The people we befriend may require our service for a number of different reasons. Our volunteers have a massive impact, helping people to feel like valued members of the community by offering friendship in a safe and supportive environment.
Volunteer befrienders are carefully matched with older people who they visit regularly so a meaningful relationship can develop. We also have other volunteers that offer much needed occasional support, such as going with people to appointments they couldn’t do on their own or running small errands for them. All of our volunteers make such a fantastic difference to the lives of the people we support. They also gain a great amount of personal fulfilment and enjoyment from their volunteering experience.
If you know an older person who would benefit from our befriending services, please get in touch, we’d love to hear from you. We take our referrals by telephone or in person, so we can talk about the needs of the person being referred and this will help us to assess whether Levenshulme Good Neighbours is the right service for them.