This article is taken from “The Befriender” Issue 41 (Befriender Network Scotland)
Just over a year ago, East Renfrewshire-based BefriendER, a befriending project working with older people, set up their telephone befriending service, Chataway, to offer regular contact for people on its 1:1 waiting list, to open up volunteering opportunities for people who might otherwise be excluded from volunteering and to also reach a larger number of isolated people who do not necessarily want a visitor but still want a regular point of contact with the outside world.
According to office-based volunteer Chris Baird,
Telephone befriending really does open up volunteering opportunities for people who would love to get involved, but can’t for whatever practical reason. I’m a wheelchair user, one of our volunteers is a former client and another volunteer spends quite a lot of time in Spain during the year, but manages to continue his befriending. It makes for a very interesting conversation piece!
Globetrotting Allan, who is based in Menorca for four months of the year but continues his telephone befriending wherever he is, said
I’d been wanting to volunteer for a while but as we spend four months a year in Menorca, finding something that wasn’t one-off or short-term proved difficult. I heard of Chataway through my wife. Being a telephone befriender has made a huge difference to me – I love the contact.
My ‘dual life’ if you like makes a great talking point for people – the weather, the food, comparing the differences between how things are done here to how they are done abroad. I always phone on a Friday morning wherever I am. I have three clients and am hoping to have a few more.
When you think about it, the distance is not such a big deal. With my mobile phone package, I get my telephone befriending calls for free, so in effect my involvement costs the project very little.
As former friends and family die and increased frailty restricts mobility, it is easy for an older person to withdraw. Older people have to constantly reconstruct their identities and redefine themselves as a result of bereavement and/or loss of abilities. Cumulative experiences of loss can have a major impact on a person’s mental health and if there is no-one to discuss this with it can lead to downward spiralling of poor mental health.
For Chataway volunteer, and former client Betty
I can empathise with the people I phone because I am an older person in the same situation. You can be lonely anywhere, at any time of the day, even if you live with a family. Pairing some older folk up with a much younger volunteer on the telephone is never going to work in my opinion, as there’s not enough common ground. A lot of the time the telephone conversations I have is spent listening about the past, the old days, which suits me as an older person.
Sometimes we chat for 20 minutes, sometimes for longer. I always keep notes about our conversations – these serve as a memory prompt as well as a tool that can be used to reflect on the ground covered. If my befriendee has an appointment in the week, I’ll always know to ask them about it; if they keep having appointments I’ll know that there might be a new pattern emerging in their lives which they might need more support with.
I phone seven people altogether. It’s a fixed part of their week and I know it means a lot to them. Some of them have even been along to the project’s group events, so I’ve met some of my telephone befriendees face-to-face and we can now visualise each other.
According to the project’s first volunteer, Chris Baird,
Chataway dovetails with Voluntary Action’s larger befriending project, BefriendER, but offers a different format. Telephone befriending relationships take a bit of time to grow as both parties get used to each other.
Our aim is to offer a caring, personal and friendly service and to keep things very much client-led. Some of our clients are waiting for 1:1 befriending matches, some aren’t, some would like a 1:1 match but are too intimidated by group and 1:1 situations. Telephone befriending can really build this last groups confidence.
All our clients live at home although one of them has just moved into a care home so we’re continuing the befriending for the first month or so as a transition support. Unfortunately the care home don’t seem to see our client’s telephone befriending session as something they’d like to continue. People don’t realise how limiting four walls can be and even when you’re the person living within four walls, it can be a shock to realise how limited your horizons have become. Staying in all day, every day would affect anyone’s mental health.
Telephone befriending opens up all kinds of opportunities for people. I’m really looking forward to what the future holds for the project and to seeing it grow.
[Photo shows Chris, Betty and BefriendER Project Worker Alan Stevenson]