Overview

Looking out for loneliness

Loneliness can be difficult to spot for many reasons:

• It can look and feel different for everybody, as feelings of loneliness are personal and subjective.
• Technology and social media can make it easy to hide emotions, limit social interactions and avoid real and meaningful conversations.
• People who are experiencing loneliness often don’t want to say how they are feeling. It can be a daunting experience to ask for help when we most need it.

Talking about loneliness

Asking people if they feel lonely can seem difficult. We might be tempted to avoid using the words ‘lonely’ or ‘loneliness’ but if the conversation is sensitively approached, and by reassuring people that loneliness can be experienced at any age or stage in our lives, it is fine to ask about loneliness directly.

Having a conversation with someone and asking them how they are feeling can help us to build more meaningful connections. If people share that there are changes they would like to make to increase or improve their social connections, we can reassure them and help them reconnect to the support they need.

Outreach and engagement

Through our work with organisations, we know there are creative, inclusive ways of reaching people who might find it difficult to engage with your service:

• Partnership working between organisations. Collaborative working approaches with a number of organisations could help you identify people who experience the risk factors for loneliness. We support professionals and organisations to collaborate through our work on the Tackling Loneliness Hub.
• Campaigns. Campaigns can inspire people of all ages to connect and share their experiences of loneliness. Recent examples include Lonely Not Alone and Lift Someone Out of Loneliness.
• Mass media and local press. Advertising your activity or service in GP surgeries, council-funded publications, and local or national press might help people experiencing loneliness feel more comfortable to reach out.
• Door knocking. Examples of this include North London Cares teaming up with Islington Council and Age UK Islington to knock on doors to deliver leaflets on winter warmth. The volunteers would give information about how to keep warm, but also about social activities, and offer to accompany the older person to various activities.
• Surveys. If you are a local authority, including a measure of loneliness in your Joint Strategic Needs Assessment can help to identify which areas, communities and groups are experiencing the greatest levels of loneliness.
• Word of mouth and personal recommendations. In our research, older people in focus groups said they knew that they knew of peers who were lonely. However, relying on word of mouth of self-referrals might exclude the most lonely or isolated older adults whose social networks may have disappeared entirely.

Reaching older people experiencing loneliness

In 2016 we launched our Missing Million report to provide guidance on how to address the challenges of identifying loneliness in older age. The report was split into three sections:

1. Identifying loneliness. We look at what data is available to help locate older people experiencing loneliness and to identify geographical areas that are likely to contain older people at risk of becoming lonely. We also explore different ways of identifying loneliness in older people, along with ideas for collaboration and innovation.
2. Applying the methods. We explain how ideas for identifying loneliness can be put into practice as foundation services, and illustrate how different methods can be complementary and combined. This section also gives examples of engaging older people from groups which have a relatively high risk of experiencing loneliness.
3. Talking about loneliness. This section aims to help front line staff and volunteers prepare for and engage in constructive dialogue with older people experiencing loneliness in ways that can bring about positive change.