SOCIAL NETWORK

Loneliness may take on another dimension in this new normal, but it has been a mental health issue that Jenna Leo of Home Care Heroes, nominated for the Cartier Women’s Initiative Awards 2020, has been remedying long before this year’s pandemic. By Virginia Jen.

THE WORD LONELINESS has had its time in the spotlight of late. Isolation, of course, has also been bandied about, but loneliness delves further. Whereas isolation is defined by minimal social contact, loneliness treks the subjective field of negative feelings that result from limited social interaction. Both can impact our physical and mental wellbeing.

For Jenna Leo, addressing loneliness has been at the core of her social start-up, Home Care Heroes. “Loneliness is one of those things that’s generally not talked about,” she says. ”And from that aspect, people are mainly like: ‘No, I’m good. I don’t need any help, I’m fine.’”

Founded with her husband Mat in 2016, Home Care Heroes is an online platform servicing residents of New South Wales that connects people wanting to provide support and companionship – the ‘heroes’ – with ‘members’, whether for grocery shopping, sharing common interests or engagement to improve state of mind. “We’re trying to create this movement around making communities more socially inclusive by getting everyday people to build relationships and help people who have a disability or are otherwise vulnerable,” says Leo.

According to the 2018 Australian Loneliness Report, one in four people experience loneliness in Australia, and a 2018

Australian Psychological Society and Swinburne University report revealed that the people most likely to be socially anxious or lonely are aged between 18 and 25, closely followed by those who are 56 to 65. In general though, loneliness defies age and ethnicity, which is reflected in the diversity of the Home Care Heroes community made up of more than 15,000 heroes aged 18 to 80 who across the group speak 96 different languages.

“We’re the only platform and organisation that focuses purely on companionship – we don’t do medical care and personal care at all,” says Leo. “We saw a gap because people in the traditional service industry were focused on the physical needs and had this assumption that if someone’s coming to shower you, of course you’re going to become great friends, but that’s not the reality.”

Though declared an essential service during lockdown, the business pivoted from face-to-face interactions to video bookings. “I think that for both heroes and members, having that ability to continue to engage with each other without anxiety is really important because you don’t want to pass that [anxiety] on to one another,” she says. “Being able to use technology in a way that also benefits our human side is a big part of what we’re doing. It’s not just the loneliness of our members, the people who are vulnerable [that we’re addressing], it’s also the loneliness of our heroes, so that they have meaningful, purposeful work.”

Jenna and Mat established Home Care Heroes after they helped relocate Mat’s parents, who were both recovering from serious illness, from Montreal to Sydney. The pair had busy corporate jobs and couldn’t provide the support his parents needed and saw how they became isolated because they couldn’t make friends and got lost venturing out. “When we introduced a friend to them, and they got along, it made a huge difference. It wasn’t that they were in the most horrible place beforehand – it was really just the difference between being lonely and being connected where you saw that positive change.”

The growing success and importance of Home Care Heroes has now been internationally recognised, with Leo one of the two Australian finalists representing the South East Asia and Oceania region in the 2020 Cartier Women’s Initiative Awards. In June, Australian company Planet Protector Packaging was announced as one of the winners.

“The program is something that’s completely up my alley in that it’s for female founders of impact, full-purpose businesses,” says Leo, one of the 21 finalists selected from 1,200 applicants from 162 countries. “It is giving us financial skills, helping us with pitches and models, raising our profiles and giving us mentors, advisors and coaches who can really up our game.”

While Home Care Heroes expansion from New South Wales into Victoria is on hold, there will be a change of name to Like Family, which is more in line with the company’s work. “The biggest compliment you can get as a hero is for someone to say that they’re like family,” says Leo. “It is that community and that feel. We’re all about people becoming more independent and creating relationships.”

For more information, go to www.likefamily.com.au and www.cartierwomens initiative.com. If you or anyone you know needs support, call Lifeline on 13 11 14.