Your voluntary and community sector needs a Trustee like you!

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Communities are coming together to face challenges of the day

Over the last few months we have seen the power of people coming together to volunteer and support their communities. Many of these volunteers have been co-ordinated by charities and organisations who have rapidly adapted and developed new services to help in this seemingly ever changing world.

Trustees – volunteer leaders from all walks of life

Behind the scenes of many of these organisations have been the trustees – also known as board or committee members, directors or governors.  Trustees are those volunteers who lead these organisations, decide how they are run and make sure a charity is doing what it was set up to do.

Trustees come from all walks of life, backgrounds and life stages.  Some have roles needing specific skills, such as experience of senior management, finance or HR and increasingly digital. Others have roles requiring lived experience, enthusiasm and drive. Time commitments vary depending on an organisation’s size and activities.  In smaller charities involvement is more likely to be hands on, in larger organisations the role may involve more support and liaison with the staff team.

The difference you can make as a trustee

Being a trustee offers a unique opportunity to support a cause from the inside, to develop or enhance leadership skills, to use or develop professional/managerial/business skills and experience all while contributing ideas and knowledge to make a difference to an organisation and in turn the community it serves.

But don’t just take our word for it. Visit our YouTube channel and watch our playlist ‘Why be a trustee?’. Please note these pieces were filmed pre covid.

How can you get involved as a trustee?

If you’re interested in finding out more about what’s involved take a look at our information sheet on What Do Trustees Do?

Ahead of this Year’s Trustees Week (2 – 6 November) a wealth of new resources with further information about what’s involved in being a Trustee are also becoming available including this new book by Directory of Social Change How to Become a Charity Trustee  and a new guide with the same name from Getting on Board.

North Yorkshire needs trustees – could you be one of them?

Search for volunteering roles on the NCVO (the National Council for Volunteering Organisation) website. There are links to multiple volunteering websites from organisations such as Vinspired, and Volunteering Matters.

Local government reorganisation: what might it all mean?

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There has been much talk recently about devolution and local government reorganisation, but what do these phrases mean and how might they impact on the residents, charities and community groups in North Yorkshire.

What is changing and why?

At the moment all major decisions about what happens across the country are made in London by central government. Devolution is the transfer of certain powers and funding away from London and given to local governments so decisions are made closer to the people, businesses and communities they serve. According to the Local Government Association, devolution provides increased flexibility and freedom for councils to more effectively improve public services for their local area.

The central government has indicated that in order for devolution to North Yorkshire to happen, the current two-tier system of a county council, seven district and borough councils and the City of York Council need to be simplified and turned into one new combined authority (a partnership of local authorities).

North Yorkshire County Council is submitting one proposed model and the district and borough councils are submitting another. City of York Council states on its website it wishes to remain a unitary council. Central government will make the final decision.

The proposed models

District and borough model

The seven district and borough councils are proposing two councils; dividing North Yorkshire into East and West.

West would incorporate Craven, Harrogate, Richmondshire and Hambleton.

East would incorporate Selby, York, Ryedale and Scarborough.

They say the main benefits of this model are:

  • The two new councils would be large enough for efficiency but small enough to keep connected to the communities
  • The model would give two unitary authorities with similar population size to ensure parity of influence in the combined authority
  • Savings of £33m – £56m
  • Greater alignment with transport infrastructure driving economic growth along the A1 (M) and A64 corridors
  • Ensures strong local leadership and democratic representation
  • Unlocks the potential of York, allowing it to address key challenges around housing delivery, capacity and improvement of children’s services

North Yorkshire County Council model

North Yorkshire County Council is putting forward a proposal to have a single council for North Yorkshire incorporating Harrogate, Craven, Ryedale, Scarborough, Richmondshire, Hambleton and Selby, with the existing separate smaller City of York Council staying as it is.

They say the main benefits of this model are:

  • Strengthen the county’s voice at national level, being able to compete with similar size combined authorities such as Sheffield, Leeds and Durham
  • Saving in excess of £25m
  • Working collaboratively on common issues affecting the whole county, e.g. rural, market towns, tourism
  • Won’t split up outstanding high-performing services such as children’s services
  • A “double devolution” offer to parish and town councils and communities – offering flexible opportunities to run services and assets currently managed by the county and district councils
  • Provide a single point of contact for people, voluntary and community organisations and businesses, replacing complex partnership arrangements

Both models propose savings in senior management and back office costs and say they won’t come from front-line delivery services.

What happens next and how to find out more

The proposals will be submitted to central government on receipt of a formal invitation to do so. The new structure is expected to be in place in spring 2022.

To see more information and keep updated with timelines and consultation opportunities visit their websites:

North Yorkshire County Council: Stronger Together

District and boroughs: Get Change Right

Making virtual fundraising a reality

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Not being able to meet in real life has put paid too many planned fundraising activities. So could now be the time to go digital and get to grips with virtual fundraising? Perhaps more than ever fundraising is not just about generating funds, it is also about raising awareness for a cause #nevermoreneeded.

Virtual fundraising is an opportunity for organisations to think about how they can diversify and strengthen their fundraising approach. Already growing in popularity, it is no exaggeration to say that there are hundreds of virtual fundraising ideas out there. This blog will highlight some of the different ways you can fundraise virtually, with real life examples for inspiration.

As virtual fundraising has become more popular it means there are already lots of tools, sites and resources to support you. Links are provided at the end of this blog to help you with the technicalities of delivering virtual events, as considerations will be different depending on the type of event or challenge you choose.

Virtual fundraising has many positives

Flexibility – fundraising virtually allows people to participate how, when and where they want – it gives them the flexibility to decide what to do, when and how to raise money.
Engagement – it can also increase the number of people who – through viewing shared and streamed fundraising events, activities and updates online – become aware, involved or engaged with a charity. It is also easier to see, link to and promote online donations.
Delivery – virtual fundraising can save time and be easier, while there are still considerations around aspects such as online safety and public perception, it does remove all the logistics of organising a big in-person event, which can take months to organise, plan and deliver.

Types of virtual fundraising

There are three ways to approach virtual fundraising.

Host a set, timed event that people access through their phones, laptops, tablets etc. Everyone does the same thing at the same time but with the freedom to do so from wherever they choose. Depending on the nature of the event people can either; purchase a ticket, make a donation or be sponsored to take part. Hosted event formats can work well for coffee mornings, auctions, talks, storytelling, tutorials or classes, bake-offs, fancy dress, performances or gigs, movie nights, quizzes or bingo, virtual club nights with shared streamed playlists or videos and prizes for best outfit or funkiest moves! Hosted or set timed events can also work for fitness events, like running or cycling. You could even consider setting up an event so that people can log their progress through a fitness tracking app or website. It doesn’t have to be just running either – you could consider some old school sports day type challenges such as laps of the garden with an egg and spoon or sack racing in pillow cases. Again people can either donate to take part, raise sponsorship or ask people to track them online and donate whilst they are completing an event or challenge.

Open fundraising events or challenges, fitness challenges or events do not however have to be done in one go. You may all decide to start or even finish at the same time, similar to a hosted event, but individuals could complete the challenge over hours, days or even weeks. Which leads into the second way to virtually fundraise, with people doing similar things over a period of time; a day, week or month but choosing when exactly within that time frame to complete their challenge.

The British Heart foundation my marathon has, for a number of years, hosted a ‘run a marathon your way’ event every February to raise funds. The idea being that you run the equivalent of a marathon but over a month. During lockdown on the weekend that the London Marathon was due to be held the idea was that people should do something that involved 2.6. It could be running but it could also be knitting 2.6 meters of bunting or baking and selling 2.6 or 26.2 cakes to raise funds – not sure what happens with the 0.2 of a cake?! The Red Cross have recently launched an online campaign asking people to choose one of a host of different challenges to raise funds for refugees, giving people even more flexibility in what they do.

It does not have to be only fitness activities. The popular monthly ‘stop or start’ events also involve people doing the same thing but in their own way. Perhaps the most well-known is Movember which promotes and raises funds for mens health charities. Cancer research’s Month off March is another event that offers lots of flexibility where people can choose to do one thing together, but again in their own time.

Go your own way, the third way to think about virtual fundraising is to give people complete flexibility; allow them to design their own events or challenges. You’ll also find out what the people who support you like and what they are interested in. A football mad 10 year old girl is raising money to support the NHS and key workers by doing keepy uppies. One that is completely new to me is ‘twitching’ – people donate or pay to watch a streamed video of someone playing an online video game, it can apparently be a real money spinner. The benefit of this type of fundraising is that it allows your supporters to do more of the things that already interest them adapting how and when they do them to raise money.

Planning your event

Decide what to do by getting online and researching to see what others are doing. All of the event ideas listed in this piece are web linked to real life examples for inspiration. Some may be a little aspirational at a smaller local level, but many of the ideas could be scaled down and given a local twist.

You may also want to consider following some dedicated fundraising blogs, not only will you get ideas for what to do but they will also share tips on best practice and safety.

Here are some suggestions to get you started;

Fundraising.co.uk – they do the hard work for you and have put together a blog which pulls together all the best fundraising news, ideas and inspiration from professional fundraisers across the UK.
Institute of fundraising blog – the go to place for everything fundraising related. They cover important legal, finance or health and safety considerations.
Charity digital – top ten virtual fundraising ideas.
101 fundraising – a crowdsourced blog on fundraising from across the world.
Fundly – a blog focusing on fundraising ideas with a sporty theme.
Mind UK – an overview of different virtual fundraising ideas from a charity’s perspective.
JustGiving – lots of great fundraising blog ideas.

Once you have decided what you want to do, continue planning your virtual event in the same way you would a normal fundraising event. However, virtual fundraising will require careful consideration particularly in relation to your social media and how your event or challenge will be marketed before, during and after your event.

‘Setting up for success’ virtual fundraising 101 this guide from BlackBaud takes you step by step through all the stages of planning and running a virtual event.

Community First Yorkshire have a dedicated marketing resource section on our website that covers using different social media platforms. There is also a dedicated section for fundraising resources.

Further support and information

Please contact info@communityfirstyorkshire.org.uk or call on 01904 704177.

Shared leadership: lockdown lessons from the learning club

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Louise Ennis (Community First Yorkshire) and Catherine Oakley (The Rowntree Society) are co-facilitators of the North Yorkshire learning club, launched by Community First Yorkshire and the Open University’s Centre for Voluntary Sector Leadership to provide opportunities for sector employees to develop energetic, practical and thoughtful leadership practice.

In the last in their series of blogs they share their experience of participating in a peer learning network during the pandemic, and insights into leadership practice going forward.

What will Leadership look like in the voluntary sector post-Covid-19?

Catherine: Back in the first week of the course we covered the difference between a ‘managerial’ approach and a ‘leadership’ approach in organisations. The managerial approach works through processes, and systems and policies to try and ensure that people and organisations work effectively. A leadership approach aims to open things up and unsettle existing practices and assumptions.

I think the Covid-19 pandemic is forcing lots of organisations in the voluntary sector into managerial mode out of necessity because things are so pressured right now as the sector responds. But in the medium-to-long term, leadership practice that is shared, collaborative and democratic will be so important in navigating the complex consequences of the pandemic. It’s important that we create time and space for this.

Louise: We’ve seen the voluntary and community sector step up to respond to the pandemic crisis, delivering vital services to the isolated and vulnerable in our communities and becoming a channel for public and private sectors to provide financial and volunteer support where it is needed most.

It’s clear that smaller, leaner, flatter charities and voluntary organisations, with less layers of hierarchy, more frontline contact, and devolved decision making are better placed to respond more quickly and are taking a lead.

The heroic single leader, bogged down in multiple decisions and task delegation, would cause blockages and take longer to respond and act. In a crisis situation, an empowered team or network of leaders, able to consult, reflect and problem-solve, and cover each other as needed, is far more effective – think of geese flying in formation, taking it in turn to take the lead as others get tired.

Another important lesson from the lockdown is how perceptions about the charity sector may change. Even within our organisations we can have different perceptions of the value of volunteers versus paid employees. The Covid-19 response has been volunteer-led and that demonstrates how fundamental both types of role are to how we operate.

Catherine: We talked about approaching volunteering as a type of collaboration in the learning club a couple of weeks ago. It can be easy to lose sight of the needs of your volunteers when you’re in crisis mode. But we agreed that reaffirming those needs on all sides explicitly was still important. Are we checking in as regularly as we can with volunteers to see whether their needs are being met, or whether they have changed?

Louise: I think the course and our learning club meetings have really highlighted the need for us to question any unconscious bias so that staff, volunteers and the people our organisations support are all equally valued and consulted.

 

How has social distancing affected peer learning?

Louise: We all agree we’ve got so much out of the online course, but the peer sharing has been equally rewarding. I think that holding our sessions face-to-face was more informal and energising, but the online interaction has been more convenient for people. There’s probably room for a combination of both going forward, and we’ve been sharing links and ideas in the club Whatsapp group as well as on the OU discussion forum too.

Catherine: I’m quite new to the sector, and I’ve loved meeting and hearing from other people working locally and regionally. We all work for different kinds of voluntary organisations but there’s a sense of common values and shared interests.

It has been a relief to have an hour or so each week just to take a step back from things, check in with everyone, and have these broader conversations. We’ve had to be relaxed about how we approach the sessions since lockdown. Some people have been completing the online module quite rigorously. Others are focusing on the learning club meetings online as a place to have some focused conversations, listen to new perspectives, and just stay in touch with people.

Louise: Leading meetings from our homes during the Covid-19 lockdown, with interruptions from kids and pets, has brought a more human side to the workplace, which is more real, more open and builds on our common experience as people, not colleagues.

Catherine: I love the interruptions. They are just lovely informal moments of shared vulnerability that bring people together.

You can watch the video of the full discussion with Louise and Catherine here.

For more leadership support visit our Community Gateway.

 

Navigating challenging times for North Yorkshire charities and social businesses

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Mark Hopley, Head of Community Support North Yorkshire, highlights the greatest challenge facing charities and social enterprises at this time.

There are over 5,000 voluntary, community and social enterprise (VCSE) groups and organisations across North Yorkshire, with both a paid and volunteer workforce. An integral part of Community First Yorkshire, our Community Support North Yorkshire service provides capacity and capability support for civil society organisations of all shapes and sizes across the county.

During the current Covid-19 pandemic the VCSE sector has made a significant difference locally and nationally in supporting the community through difficult times, from keeping communities connected to delivering frontline services.

Our recent VCSE Resilience Survey demonstrated that 41% of North Yorkshire organisations do not anticipate being able to continue beyond October 2020. The predominant factor is funding. Many organisations are currently facing the perfect storm of reduced income at a time when the demands for their services are at an all-time high and in many instances this is not diminishing.

Charity trustees and directors of social businesses as the key decision makers have been able to access short-term funding from a combination of Community Foundations, the National Lottery Fund and Small Business Discretionary Grants.  In many cases this will not be enough, organisations will continue to reduce costs whilst trying to fundraise in a fierce and very competitive external environment.

If you are a charity trustee, director or senior manager and your not for private profit organisation is struggling financially, then I advise you to speak in confidence with a member of the Community Support North Yorkshire team who will listen to your story and help connect you with support that’s bespoke to your needs.

However, the earlier you make contact the better as the number of support options available can diminish the longer you leave it.  So if you are beginning to find cash flow a challenge or if you are anticipating struggling paying bills as they fall due, then now is the time to make that call.  You can contact us either via communitysupport@communityfirstyorkshire.org.uk or by calling our office 01904 704177.  If you need to leave a message someone will return your call as soon as possible.

You can visit our Community Gateway to see the training, events and suite of resources that you may find useful to support and develop your organisation at this time.

Funded by North Yorkshire County Council and NHS North Yorkshire, we have a vision of a capable, collaborative, diverse and influential civil society across North Yorkshire supporting resilient, resourceful and confident communities where co-produced solutions enable people of all ages to be healthier, independent and able to fulfil their ambitions.

Facing Elephants in the Room: Collaboration Lessons from the Learning Club

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Louise Ennis (Community First Yorkshire, pictured above centre with leaders from the Open University) and Catherine Oakley (The Rowntree Society) are co-facilitators of the North Yorkshire learning club, launched by Community First Yorkshire and the Open University’s Centre for Voluntary Sector Leadership to provide opportunities for sector employees to develop energetic, practical and thoughtful leadership practice.

Here they share insights from the group’s learning around the OU’s free Collaborative Leadership online course.

 

What are your experiences of the challenges and opportunities of collaborative leadership?

Louise: We all agree that collaboration is the way forward for sustaining the voluntary sector given reduced resources and ever increasing demand. But it’s not always easy to know how to lead collaboratively.

A particular issue is the way that our services are commissioned by the public sector and funders. That process makes organisations who could collaborate into competitors, less likely to share, join forces, and less able to offer complementary solutions and services.

Collaborating brings so many benefits – greater voice and influence, greater share of funds and resources, and more joined up, holistic services for the communities we serve. But we need to know how to collaborate, and that’s where a shared leadership practice can really help.

Catherine: I remember thinking about the challenges of collaborating in my course activity. Time, obviously is one: identifying, building and maintaining collaborations is a big commitment and it requires a lot of energy. I’m the only employee in our organisation so our resources are limited.

Some practical advice from the online course was to ‘think about where the greatest early promise lies and go with this’. Also to ‘focus your attention on people with the power to enable or block the growth of the organisation’. Both are about being selective and strategic.

There’s an issue around ensuring that expectations on all sides are understood from the start of a collaboration. When collaborations emerge informally, there can be tough conversations when obstacles arise or circumstances change for one partner. And what can we learn from ‘failed collaborations’? Which partnerships didn’t go well and why? Would we have done anything differently?

Louise: The key to success is to agree expectations upfront and not be afraid to work through elephants in the room – that’s how things get sorted and progress is made. Striving for harmony won’t result in action or enable everyone to have a voice. Those thorny make or break issues are the ones that count and need to be openly discussed, and considering a range of viewpoints is the way to solve them.

 

Why should we collaborate with other sectors?

Catherine: For a small heritage organisation like ours, working collaboratively ensures that we can reach more people and extend the impact of our work. It also helps us build a cross-sector community of individuals, groups and organisations who can approach projects and problems in distinctive ways we wouldn’t otherwise have considered.

Louise: That’s so true. Our discussions in the club have shown that it’s much more effective to seek a range of collaborators – don’t just go to those people who think like you. Also ask volunteers for example, or funders as well as beneficiaries.

There is a clear opportunity for leaders to collaborate outside the sector by bridging cultures and challenging perceptions – such as that the private sector is all about profit, or that the voluntary sector is a bunch of well-meaning amateurs doing good work. Being open to wider perspectives and building trust and understanding creates a real opportunity for us to put the beneficiaries first and come up with solutions for our communities together.

I see the boundaries between work and volunteering becoming increasingly blurred – the CEO of a company may also be a trustee or have a CSR strategy and lots of employees carry out employee volunteering programmes in the workplace or deliver voluntary services in their own time. Just look at the Covid-19 response networks springing up across the UK, many manned by new volunteers sharing their professional skills.

The bottom line is that we all care about where we live and work, whatever sector we work in, and by taking a more collaborative approach, leaders can give all of us a voice and a way to contribute.

Catherine: I really believe that our colleagues right across the voluntary sector would benefit from getting together in a safe space to build relationships and explore collaborative leadership together, just as we have. There’s so much common experience to share – because it’s not just for senior leaders, it’s for everyone.

 

You can watch the video of the full discussion with Louise and Catherine here.

For more leadership support visit our Community Gateway.

The Power of Small: Leadership Lessons from the Learning Club

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Louise Ennis (Community First Yorkshire) and Catherine Oakley (The Rowntree Society) are co-facilitators of the North Yorkshire learning club, launched by Community First Yorkshire and the Open University’s Centre for Voluntary Sector Leadership to provide opportunities for sector employees to develop energetic, practical and thoughtful leadership practice. In preparation for Small Charity Week they have been interviewed by the Open University to share the group’s learning.

Watch this video of their conversation.

 

Why did you start a leadership learning club?

Louise: It was a way to offer the Open University’s Centre for Voluntary Sector Leadership’s free, accessible leadership programmes to everyone in our sector – not just larger organisations and existing leaders.

The club complements the Centre’s online courses on ‘Developing Leadership Practice in the Voluntary Sector’ and ‘Collaborative Leadership’ with face-to-face sharing sessions where we explore our thoughts and experiences and discuss course activities as a group.

We’ve had to move online during the Covid-19 pandemic restrictions but that has enabled the club to keep going, and it’s been interesting to study leadership against this backdrop.

Catherine: We are all very aware of how important leadership is in the voluntary sector, but the opportunity to network and access training can be limited alongside so many other time and financial pressures, particularly for smaller charities and community groups.

The great thing about our club is that it’s peer-led, so we take it in turns to facilitate the sessions and we run it at a time and pace that suits us. It’s relaxed, informal and a safe space for us to share experiences and learning. Fellow participants have also been able to use it to learn more about starting a career in the sector or moving into formal leadership positions.

If someone had asked you to define leadership before the course, what would you have said?

Catherine: Well, I would have struggled not to imagine a single person. Someone with certain qualities. A charismatic and inspirational figure. I would also have thought about someone senior – a key-decision maker with a lot of power.

Louise: I was expecting to learn about personal leadership styles, how to sell a vision, and bring people with you as a strong leader.

Catherine: One of the first things we covered was the fact that you don’t need to be in a senior or managerial role to be a ‘leader’. Leadership isn’t a set of innate qualities, but a practice you can learn and nurture consciously.

Louise: I think the course has been a real eye-opener for all of us because it focuses instead on leadership as something that’s shared. It can apply to anyone, not just formal leaders or CEOs.

Catherine: Once I had made that shift in my mind from leadership being the remit of one individual to it being a practice that anyone can take on, it took root. It’s changed my perception of what being a leader means in ways that will be hard to ‘un-learn’ or ‘un-see’.

The alternative to the ‘dominant’ leader model is to seek out diverse voices and perspectives beyond our own ideas and experiences. It feels absolutely fundamental in the context of the renewed urgency of campaigns for racial justice globally now.

Participatory leadership is about ceding power: using the platforms and privileges you have to open up new channels for the empowerment of marginalised and oppressed individuals. And not just through ‘consultation’, or through peripheral advisory groups, but at every level of an organisation, whatever it’s size.

Louise: I’ve found it so helpful to discuss with others what collaborative and participative leadership mean in practice. A democratic approach to leadership is about giving everyone a chance to reflect and contribute to difficult decision-making, not about aiming for a unanimous decision. We’ve seen during the Covid-19 pandemic, that smaller voluntary organisations with empowered decision making, have been able to provide a more rapid response on the frontline to communicate with and deliver services to those in need.

It’s not about being a hero and saving the day, it’s about all of us practicing a leadership approach – communicating, collaborating and tackling difficult problems by debating and deciding on a course of action and sticking by it. Looking for the path that will cause maximum benefit with minimum fallout for everyone concerned.

Catherine: We talked about the need to be directive at times and how this is possible within a shared leadership model. It’s about finding a balance, even when the temptation during a crisis can be to move into a totally directive mode because you are under pressure to deliver fast.

What changes from your learning will you introduce to your leadership practice?

Louise: A really strong theme from the courses that I’m building on in my leadership approach is the power of critical reflection. This means building in time to ask questions, consult, discuss and explore options inside and beyond the organisation or even the sector.

We are so solutions-oriented, that we often try to avoid what Grint called ‘wicked’ problems1 – problems that are ongoing and for which there is no perfect answer. By questioning our assumptions and going beyond our own experience, we can make better decisions that everyone is accountable for. Explaining why we are taking a decision and the likely fall out demonstrates clear leadership and direction.

Catherine: I agree about being open. We talked in the club about vulnerability as a positive trait in leadership. A traditional view might identify the leader as the person with the answers, rather than the person asking the questions. It’s difficult to resist these expectations and to identify your own limitations instead. But doing this opens up new possibilities for shared leadership.

In my current role I’ve been getting more comfortable saying to our volunteers, trustees and partners when I don’t have the answers. We can then work together on something that no single one of us could achieve alone.

I am also looking at how I can support colleagues and collaborators to share their ideas at an early stage. We had a really interesting group discussion about feeling pressure at work to put forward fully-formed ideas – the ‘elevator pitch’. We talked instead about the benefits of exploring problems earlier together.

Helpful suggestions from the course material were to hold back from interrupting people if they’re trying to work through something out loud and not to feel self-conscious when this happens to us – and it does happen to me, quite often! Those moments when language starts to falter can be when we are pushing our understanding and ideas forward.

Louise: We talked in the club about being brave and taking that leap into the unknown with partners as well as colleagues. There’s a great quote from the course that ‘Unknowns in leadership practice are most powerfully explored collectively.’

Visit our Leadership Hub to find out more about the OU course.

1 Grint K. (2010) Wicked Problems and Clumsy Solutions: The Role of Leadership. In: Brookes S., Grint K. (eds) The New Public Leadership Challenge. Palgrave Macmillan, London

Taking the one out of loneliness

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The Loneliness Campaign North Yorkshire’s project development officer, Colleen Allwood, tells us about Loneliness Awareness Week 15 – 19 June 2020: ‘Taking the one out of loneliness’

Loneliness Awareness Week is almost upon us, but what it is and why should we bother with it? Hosted by the Marmalade Trust in conjunction with The Great Get Together and Jo Cox Foundation, the campaign started in 2016, aiming to raise awareness of loneliness and encouraging people to speak about it openly. This year, due to Covid-19 the campaign has gone virtual, taking the ‘one’ out of loneliness by asking people to talk about it one conversation at a time;  conversations which can build understanding,  create connectedness and reduce the stigma surrounding loneliness.

According to a recent report from the Office of National Statistics, during the first month of lockdown the equivalent of 7.4 million (30.9%) people said that their wellbeing had been affected through feeling lonely. Those who experienced loneliness were ‘more likely than others to be struggling to find things to help them cope and were also less likely to feel they had support networks to fall back on.’[1] With many working-aged adults furloughed or working from home, those who lived alone or were shielding for health reasons were more likely to report loneliness, have lower personal wellbeing scores and experience higher anxiety levels.  This is not normally a group associated with loneliness, and it has perhaps made society take a step back and re-examine loneliness and what it means for us a whole.

Loneliness is certainly not something new, with 6% of the population of Great Britain saying pre-lockdown that they were chronically lonely, often or always experiencing loneliness.  And whilst North Yorkshire has a reputation for resilience, relatively high levels of happiness and good quality of living compared to many other places in England, that does not mean that pre Covid-19, the county was as connected and resourceful as it might have been.  Over the past year The Loneliness Campaign North Yorkshire has been working hard to create a strategic framework to inspire everyone to tackle issues of loneliness for the long-term, preventing and alleviating the feelings of loneliness, and overcoming barriers that cause social isolation.

Building stronger, more connected communities with kindness one conversation at a time will tackle loneliness and isolation. It will result in better resilience and greater wellbeing within the communities and neighbourhoods that we live in. We have seen many examples of great kindness, neighbourliness and resourcefulness in the past few months with many new Covid-19 networks springing up and many people volunteering to support others in their community and neighbourhood. Let us keep that conversation going, start looking to the future and become more aware of loneliness within our own communities one conversation at a time.

 

[1] (Office for National Statistics, 2020)