Deaf Becky knows about isolation and is helping others to combat loneliness
PROJECT IS TACKLING PROBLEM MADE WORSE BY COVID
The Covid pandemic has plunged thousands of people across the region into loneliness, which experts say can be as dangerous to people’s health as smoking. But now a new project called Connect Erewash is working to bring people back together – led by a worker with firsthand knowledge of feeling like an outsider. LUCY STEPHENS reports.
BECKY Daykin knows all about what it’s like to feel isolated. Profoundly deaf since childhood, she communicates through excellent lip-reading skills honed over more than 30 years, but despite being positive by nature, it can sometimes get a bit much.
“Deaf people mostly just get on with it and are often very good communicators because they have always had to adapt to different communication and are often solution finders,” says Becky, who says even her own family didn’t know she was deaf when she was very young, mistaking her lack of hearing for shyness.
“However, it can get tiring. Even when I was at school with my friends, although they did their best, or with my family, if there is a conversation happening, sometimes I’m just too tired to ask what’s going on.
“And sometimes, when I’ve thought about personally going to community groups in the past, I haven’t got involved, because I’ve been worried I won’t be able to keep up.”
Over the years these experiences have shaped the way in which Becky approaches the society she has, at times, felt left out of, by becoming an expert solution finder herself and using whatever creative ways in which she could communicate and build a career for herself.
As a result, she is now settling into a new role, that of development worker for Connect Erewash, which is a project set up by Erewash Voluntary Action as part of commission handed out by Derbyshire County Council’s public health department to reduce loneliness and isolation among people right across society in Erewash.
“I think there are always issues with isolation around disability, but my own life experiences have given me an insight into what it’s like for many people who are feeling isolated,” says Becky.
“That’s why I’m so excited to be starting this new job and working to support more opportunities to combat isolation for people across the whole of Erewash.”
Loneliness found its way onto the political agenda through the late Labour MP Jo Cox, who recognised the thorny problem of isolation in contemporary Britain and set up a cross-party Loneliness Commission with her colleague Seema Kennedy MP before her untimely death in 2016.
Five years on, the experiences of Covid and the various lockdowns has meant that arguably many more people are now feeling lonely and cut off, which means that Connect Erewash, which started pre-Covid, is needed more than ever. Connect Erewash is designed to unite community groups, individuals and organisations which all have an interest in the health and wellbeing of local residents within five community networks, in Kirk Hallam, Cotmanhay, Petersham, Sandiacre and Sawley.
The project has many different partners and has a steering group, including Derbyshire social landlord Derventio Housing Trust through its Growing Lives project – a scheme which brings homeless people together in Cotmanhay to learn new skills such as gardening, arts and crafts and woodworking.
“One of the biggest reasons people want to come to our Growing Lives programmes is that it gets them out of the house,” says Jackie Carpenter, assistant director of strategy at Derventio Housing Trust.
“Research has shown that everybody needs ten connections in one day. If you sit on your own in your four walls with no-one to talk to you can quickly go downhill. Us human beings are social animals. We need to connect.
“We support the work of Connect Erewash because want to be part of the communities where we have our housing. It’s not just about putting a
If you sit on your own in your four walls with no-one to talk to you can quickly go downhill.
Jackie Carpenter
roof over someone’s head. It’s about all the things that make life work. So Connect Erewash was something we wanted to support.”
Another group that has got involved is the Riverside PAN Disability Football Club, which is based in Long Eaton and is part of the wider Riverside Club, which has 20 teams in all, from children’s teams to veterans.
All of the teams help to bring people together and combat loneliness, and its PAN disability team, which plays in the East Midlands PAN Disability Football League, contains players with a variety of learning disabilities, mental health issues, partial sightedness, cerebral palsy and autism.
“We are trying to focus on what we have got available and create these community links between all the partners to help them understand what is out there for people,” says Stella
Scott, chief executive officer of Erewash Voluntary Action.
“Our priority is to understand our own Erewash community, find out where the pockets of loneliness and isolation are, and try to build those community connections. Where we do find gaps in provision, we will definitely have a look at it. “More people are lonely and isolated than ever, and it can be at any age, too, from young parents to elderly people living alone. “Loneliness can be so miserable and debilitating. This pandemic has knocked a lot of people’s confidence when it comes to socialising.
“I hope that Becky and the team at Connect Erewash can help heal some of those wounds and get people talking to each other again.
“We are all human beings at the end of the day. We need each other, now more than ever.”
To find out more about Connect Erewash, phone 0115 946 6740 or email Becky on Becky@erewashcvs.org.uk.