May praises Post for fight to aid lonely
New Minister warns of challenge ahead
THE NEW Minister for Loneliness has admitted there will be no quick fix to tackling the “phenomenal” challenge of social isolation – as Prime Minister Theresa May commended The
Yorkshire Post on its “vital” campaign to tackle the issues.
In her first newspaper interview since taking on the role, Tracey Crouch said long-term coordinated action was needed to tackle loneliness – but admitted the crisis would not be solved overnight. But two weeks on from Theresa May’s much-feted announcement of a cross-Governmental strategy to tackle loneliness, which affects nine million people across the UK, the Government is still not able to put a figure on amount it is pledging to tackling the problem.
Today The Yorkshire Post marks four years since the launch of its multi award-winning campaign, Loneliness: The Hidden Epidemic, and pledges to continue fighting for those people in our region suffering in the clutches of social isolation.
The Prime Minister thanked this newspaper for “shining a spotlight” on the issue in our “commendable” campaign.
She said: “This paper has made its mark in two vital ways – it has inspired people here in Yorkshire to donate their time to initiatives to tackle loneliness, getting vulnerable individuals together through lunches and social events.
“Just as importantly, it has enhanced people’s understanding of loneliness as something that can have truly devastating consequences on individuals of all ages and from all backgrounds.”
Mrs May said the Government was determined to continue the legacy of murdered Batley MP Jo Cox, who worked with The Yorkshire
Post to “push this issue up the agenda”, with its new loneliness minister.
“We want to stop loneliness being a stark reality for so many and by working together I believe we can make a real difference to people’s lives,” the Prime Minister added.
Ms Crouch said work had already begun in the wake of recommendations by the Jo Cox Commission on Loneliness, which launched a far-reaching report into the issue in December. She said one of the first steps in tackling loneliness was recognition, and said this newspaper was “enormously important” in its work highlighting the issue.
She added: ”Raising the profile of the issue is the first step. Making sure that we have coordinated understanding and approach to tackling isolation is one of the great challenges and that’s what I will be doing over the coming months and hopefully years in looking how we tackle this.
“We are not going to be able to solve this problem overnight, or indeed within the next 12 months, but we can start by setting out a framework of how we can have a proper coordinated approach.”
LIKE NINE out of 10 women, after the birth of her first child two years ago, MP Tracey Crouch felt the twingeing ache of loneliness for the first time.
It is an experience many people – from all walks of life – can relate to, and one she will use in her new role as the country’s first ever Minister for Loneliness.
Speaking to The Yorkshire Post exclusively as it marks the fourth anniversary of the Loneliness:
The Hidden Epidemic campaign, the MP spoke of how work has already begun implementing a host of actions aimed at tackling loneliness, after the Government accepted in full the recommendations of the Jo Cox Commission on Loneliness last month, and speaks of her own experience of the issue, which affects nine million people across the UK.
“I think we all have moments of feeling isolated or alone,” Ms Crouch said. “I’m a relatively new mum and despite the fact that I have a wonderful partner and a close network of family and friends there are always times as a new mum when you do feel quite isolated.
“I have been very open in the past about suffering from depression and anxiety and the Jo Cox Commission highlighted that people who suffer from a mental health condition can sometimes feel quite isolated as part of their condition.
“There is no one-size-fits-all solution and I think it’s really important to stress that because loneliness is quite subjective and therefore you have to have flexibility in some of the solutions. Not everything is going to suit every person.
“So, the way I dealt with feeling isolated when my other half was at work and I was at home with the baby was to go out and do some exercise, obviously taking the baby with me. That’s not something that everybody would want to do. I didn’t want to go to the mother and baby groups, whereas others would be more comfortable with that.
“Because there’s not one single problem, there’s not one single solution.”
Part of her “phenomenal” challenge over the coming weeks and months will be to bring in a metric to measure loneliness and to develop a cross-Government strategy that will be used to tackle loneliness in people of all ages. But why her? With growing evidence of loneliness as a health issue, there was an element of surprise when Theresa May announced her first Minister for Loneliness would come not from the newlynamed Department for Health and Social Care, but from Digital, Culture, Media and Sport.
“There was a recognition that part of my portfolio on Civil Society already crosses many Whitehall departments and has real facilities for what the Commission’s recommendations were looking at, that crossdepartmental approach to tackling loneliness,” she said.
“But I hope as well that it’s a reflection of what I have done before I was a Minister. I did quite a lot of work on the loneliness campaign, albeit for older people. I was heavily involved in some of the Parliamentary activity through Contact the Elderly, Silver Line and things like that – so I’m not necessarily new to the issue. As a Minister I have that greater opportunity to look at it across all departments and actually, through a completely different demographic as well because in the past, I think there was a very heavy, and understandable, focus on older people.
“But what the Jo Cox Commission found was significant evidence of loneliness within all parts of society.”
Since 2014, when this newspaper began raising awareness of loneliness, the issue has become increasingly under the spotlight – but it is only now that the Government has pledged to make a concerted effort to tackle it.
Ms Crouch said: “The campaign that The Yorkshire
Post has ran in terms of raising it up the agenda is enormously important.
“All partners, and that’s not just government, central and local, but businesses and community groups as well, must recognise that they have a role to play in combating this and they will actually benefit from there being less isolation and loneliness in their areas.
“Making sure that we have coordinated understanding and approach to tackling isolation is one of the great challenges and that’s what I will be doing over the coming months and hopefully years in looking how we tackle this. We are not going to be able to solve this problem overnight, or indeed within the next 12 months, but we can start by setting out a framework of how we can have a proper coordinated approach.”
And so the work begins – but it will have to be juggled with her other responsibilities. This weekend she is in the USA for the Superbowl, and later this month, South Korea for the Winter Olympics.
She has already began talking to the Social Care Minister so they can work together in developing the Government’s loneliness strategy – one she is keen is not ignored.
“I’m really keen that it’s not just a strategy for the sake of it,” she said. “I’m not in this business to basically have a document that then gets put on a shelf and forgotten. I really want to make sure that what we do will really be the foundation for future work – because this is a generational challenge and I want to make sure that everything we do beyond that is building on those foundations.”