‘I get as much out of our conversations as they do’
Luke Mintz talks to two Silver Line friends who have made it their business to keep in phone contact with lonely older people
This year, Jason Brown will send a Christmas card to a new friend. He speaks to her on the phone; listening to stories from her childhood and any problems she might be facing. But he’s never met her and doesn’t know her surname, even though he has been talking to her every week for a year and a half.
They were introduced through a scheme run by The Silver Line charity, which combats loneliness among the elderly. Volunteers like Brown are paired with older people, who they call once a week for a chat.
For many of the scheme’s elderly beneficiaries, the phone call from their “Silver Line friend” may be the only human contact they have all week, bar a brief exchange at the local shop or a few words to their postman.
According to the Office for National Statistics, more than half of Britain’s over-75s live alone, an increase of 24 per cent over the past two decades, and half a million of them go at least five or six days a week without seeing anyone. This has contributed to an epidemic of loneliness among the pension-age population – an affliction described in 2013 as a “national shame” by Jeremy Hunt, then the health secretary. Those affected tend to live in seclusion, rarely leaving their house, and large numbers of younger people are unaware of the vast scale of the problem. Brown, 47, had never given much thought to the issue until he heard about the scheme at Saga, the holidays and insurance company, where he works as director of customer relations.
“I’ve got family that live five minutes in one direction, 10 minutes in the other, and friends that live slightly further away,” says Brown, who lives in Margate, Kent, with his wife. “I probably take these things for granted. I drive around and see lots of homeless people – that’s very visible – but [elderly loneliness] is not.” He applied to be a Silver Line friend, detailing his interests so he could be matched with the right person. After a phone interview, he was paired with a woman in her 80s who has been plagued by loneliness since her husband died a few years ago. She has four adult children and several grandchildren, but they are “spread all over the country” and she “doesn’t get to see them as often as she would like,” Brown explains.
They keep much of their chatter light, discussing the weather, television, gardening and football – as a Tottenham fan, Brown sometimes takes gentle teasing from his friend, whose late husband supported Chelsea. “Often, she will talk about what she’s been growing in the garden. She always asks me about my job. It’s like talking to a family member sometimes. My wife had a back condition for about a year, and one of the first things she would say every week was, ‘How’s your wife’s back?’”
But their conversations sometimes take a more serious turn. She has told him she will probably spend Christmas alone because her family are busy. She has also spent many hours spilling her heart out about her canine friend, who died last year. “When she had that dog, she had a companion in the house, and for a couple of weeks after the dog passed she couldn’t talk about it because it was too upsetting.”
The anonymity of the scheme can be strange. Brown says it is “almost like having a relative who lives in another country” whose full name he doesn’t know (he’ll send the Christmas card to The Silver Line’s office for them to pass on) – but the charity says it is a necessary safeguard to remove any risk of exploitation, with some con artists known to strike up friendships with isolated pensioners before tricking them into handing over large sums of their savings.
Almost five million older people believe they have been targeted by scammers, according to Age UK research, with around half a million having fallen victim. Those who are bereaved, living alone, or affected by dementia are among the most at risk.
Brown says he has learnt a great deal from his new friend, who is probably his only acquaintance who was alive during the Second World War. “She remembers being evacuated in the war, and we talk about how the world’s changed over the last 30 or 40 years. We’ve discussed her perspective on education, what children used to do after school without computers.”
Alice Lynn, 28, has also come to look forward to her weekly phone call with her friend, a 75-year-old woman who lives alone. Lynn volunteered as a Silver Line friend after she saw a poster at Ascentric, a Bath-based investment platform where she is a customer support consultant, and thought of her grandparents. “I had a really great relationship with all of them, and I knew how lonely some of them got after their partners had passed,” remembers Lynn, who lives in Chippenham, Wilts, with her partner. “I thought, ‘What a lovely thing to do’. I learnt so much from my own grandparents – like not to stress out so much, things are going to work out in the end. It’s nice to give back to the older generation.”
Lynn was surprised by how well she had been matched to her partner. Both are wildly interested in fashion and much of their phone time has been spent gossiping about historical styles. “The matching process is really good, they’ll give you a long paragraph of who the person is, what their interests are, and why they are looking for involvement with the charity. The lady I’m speaking to at the moment used to live in France, and I really love the south of France. I really love fashion, and she used to run a clothes shop. We talk about those kind of things.”
Lynn is also helping to gear her friend up for a house move, and is even helping her to navigate disagreements with family members. “She’s moving to a different area. It’s quite big for somebody of that age.
‘I think she does feel less lonely, knowing that she has a call to look forward to’
Some family members possibly aren’t agreeing with her decision and I’ll try to just give her my opinion and what I think each of those family members are possibly thinking.
“I think she does feel less lonely, knowing that she has a call to look forward to every Tuesday. I know she struggles to get out of the house to her local community centre, and I think it provides the comfort of knowing that she’ll have some interaction that week.”
Both Brown and Lynn say they have gained more from the conversations than they anticipated. “When I come off the phone, I end up talking to my wife about the things I’ve been talking to this lady about,” says Brown. “I’m not doing it because I have to, I’m doing it because I want to.”