‘A night answering phones at The Silver Line broke my heart’
Eleanor Steafel spends a night answering phones with The Silver Line and discovers why it has become a port of call for so many
‘People have been talking to their spouse for 50 years but now they’re not there anymore’
‘It could be 10 minutes before we get to the bottom of what’s troubling them’
At first glance, The Silver Line’s headquarters, on a rain-soaked Blackpool industrial estate, resembles the backdrop to a scene from Line of Duty. But, as I quickly discover when I join them on a dismal November night, inside are some of the kindest souls you could ever hope to talk to on your brightest day, let alone in the depths of despair.
At all hours of the day and night, a small band of volunteers and paid staff are glued to the phones, answering calls from people who are lonely, in distress or who simply need to talk. These are people with no one to nudge when a strange noise in the house wakes them up at 2am. They’re often people who may not have spoken to another soul for days.
“Some ring us because they need the contact of a human voice,” says Anthea Beeks, the operations manager. “Others ring because they need to vent or they’re distressed. We used to have somebody who rang up in the evening to say goodnight, and then, in the morning, to say good morning, just so somebody would know they were still alive.”
The Silver Line is the only national, free, confidential helpline dedicated to older people. Since its launch in 2013, the line has received more than 2.5million calls, most of them made overnight or at weekends when no other helpline is available for older people who may be lonely, isolated or confused. Over half of callers say they have no one else to speak to. “What do you do when you wake up worried and don’t have anyone there to allay those fears?” says Anthea.
It is 11pm and, on the other end of the phone, Tom (all callers’ names have been changed) is relaying today’s visit to the dentist. “I saw the hygienist first, and she was pleased with me. Then I saw the dentist and he was pleased with me.”
The call handler, Joyce, asks Tom about his trip to the community centre. He enjoyed himself but wasn’t too happy with the cup of tea he was served. “When it turned up, I thought it needs a bit more milk and she hadn’t put any sugar in – I just have one sugar, you see – so I waited until she’d disappeared, and I went in the kitchen and sorted it out myself.”
It is easy to forget that conversations like this are the stuff of life. Having someone to talk to about everything and nothing is something many of us take for granted, until we notice there’s no one with whom to share our news.
“You do get some people who wake up, they’re alone, they’ve lost their husband or wife of 50-odd years, they need someone to talk to because they’ve been talking to their spouse for half a century and they’re not there any more,” Joyce tells me.
The phone rings again immediately (in fact, they never seem to stop). It’s Charles, a regular caller. “I think I told you before I’ve got vertigo, tinnitus, diabetes, and I’ve had a slight stroke,” he says, clearly feeling low. “That’s right, you’ve got the full house haven’t you,” says Joyce, cheerily.
“I have,” he answers. “I lay in bed most of the day, every day, hour after hour after hour. My eyes are too bad so I have a job to read the paper.
“Christmas is a right sad time of year, isn’t it?”
“Well it can be, but it’s what you make of it, isn’t it?” says Joyce, kindly. “You can always ring us. Now, was it you I spoke to about calling that number to get some Talking Books?”
She teases him warmly about him losing the number, then asks what he had for his tea and how his daughter’s flower shop is doing, while she finds it again. This is the magic of The Silver Line – the people staffing the phones provide genuine continuity and warmth. Phoning the line isn’t the same as having someone there all the time, but a 20-minute chat with a person who remembers that your cat is called Trevor goes a long way towards stemming the tide of loneliness.
I am beckoned to another call. A regular has heard that a journalist from The Daily Telegraph is in the office and wants to talk to me. “I use The Silver Line every day,” says Anita, who started calling when she lost her brother two years ago. She lives alone, and is housebound due to crippling arthritis. “If I’m lonely or I need some support, The Silver Line is there, and instantly. It’s like I’m talking to my friend, but I can’t disturb my friend at 2 o’clock in the morning. With my arthritis, in the winter months it’s very painful and I can’t sleep. I can ring The Silver Line and the adviser is there, and we have a chat and the pain goes away.”
It’s midnight, and on another line one lady has called to say goodnight. “Hello, this is Margaret, just ringing for a chat before I go to bed.”
“Ah that’s nice of you, Margaret,” says Jayne, a volunteer for two years. “What have you been up to?”
“Oh well, I was very busy today…” So begins an update about a new carer who isn’t up to much, a problem with her groceries, and a forthcoming trip to Brighton with her sister. After 20 minutes she has fully debriefed and is off to bed. She won’t be calling tomorrow, though, she warns. She’ll be at bingo. “Oh right, thanks for letting us know,” says Jayne, smiling.
While many simply call for a chat, others are in the midst of a crisis, and struggling with complex mental health issues. “A lot of the mental health lines close at 8pm, and that’s when it’s at its worse,” says Joyce.
“With someone you’ve been speaking to for three or four years, I can see a change in them, a deterioration. It’s awful really.”
On another line, a man has called to say he is contemplating harming himself. None of the call handlers is a mental health professional. They’re just human beings with an extraordinary skill for empathy and for bringing calm to troubled minds. Before long, it sounds as if the handler has managed to talk him round. Sometimes, Joyce tells me, it can take a few minutes to get to the bottom of why they have called at all. “What someone starts talking about might not be the thing they rang for. It could be 10 minutes before we get to the bottom of what’s troubling them.
“They need to interact with you to see if you’re going to be the sort of person they want to tell.”
It’s 2am and Joyce’s next call is from Christine. She’s in her 60s and has learning difficulties. “I feel so lonely and totally lacking in energy to do any of my bits and pieces,” she says. “And I know I won’t sleep all night.”
She is worrying, she says, about getting older. “I worry about what’s going to happen to me.”
It’s then that Joyce does something quietly remarkable. Rather than tell her how sorry she is, as I’m sure I would have done, Joyce begins to tell a funny story about her 88-year-old mother, whom she recently found up a ladder changing a light bulb. Within seconds, Christine is howling. “She never was! Up a ladder? Ah that’s really cheered my spirits up to hear that. She’s 88 and she’s managing to look after herself? Oh you’ve cheered me up no end. Thank you so much. God bless you and your mum.”
“And you, Christine, and if you don’t sleep just call us back.”
Sometimes, Joyce says, asking questions can make things worse. “You’ll say: ‘Have you got any children?’ and they’ll say ‘My daughter hasn’t talked to me for 30 years’, and you think, ‘Oh why did I ask that?’
“Sometimes it’s nice to leave them on a high. She’ll be laughing and thinking of my mum up the ladder.”
You can call The Silver Line on 0800 470 8090
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