Tackling loneliness cannot rest with volunteers alone | Janet Morrison

Barely a day goes by without one story or another highlighting the crisis in social care, and flagging the contribution failures in the health service are making to the problem. Added to this are the pressures of an ageing population in which many of the people living for longer are doing so with complex conditions.

The government argues it has taken short term steps to address the crisis, but as yet has offered no suggestion of how it might solve the problem long term.

Independent Age, along with many other charities in the care sector, have long been calling for a cross-party solution to address the crisis in health and social care. We can’t kick this issue into the long grass yet again. As a society we need to ask ourselves, what kind of care we want in later life and how much we are we prepared to pay for it. But the costs involved also beg the question of what role volunteers should have in helping to tackle these issues.

Through our network of volunteers across the UK we offer friendship services to older people who are lonely. Our volunteers provide regular phone calls and visits, enabling older people to feel more connected to their local community and, crucially, helping to reduce loneliness.

A great example of how our work can help is Ron, who is nearly 90. Ron’s wife died a number of years ago, and following a fall at home in which he broke his hip, he very rarely gets out. Ron would go for days on end without speaking to anyone. He now has regular visits from one of our volunteers, Alison, whose employers so value the work she does with Ron that they let her work flexibly so she can visit him.

Crucially, we understand that volunteering is not a one-way street: our volunteers tell us they get as much out of the relationship as the person they visit or call. That might be through the pleasure of a joint interest, or through sharing life stories and experiences. There is evidence that volunteering can bring health benefits for the volunteer too.

Volunteers from across the health and social care sectors are already providing essential services.

There are, however, firm boundaries to the volunteer relationship. We’re clear that it is not the role of our friendship volunteers to offer advice on issues like benefits or accessing care and support (we have an expert helpline for that). And their role mustn’t be confused with the provision of statutory services that are the legal duties of bodies like councils and the NHS.

It’s essential that the boundaries of any volunteering role are clearly understood by the organisation arranging the service, the volunteer providing it and the person receiving it.

That doesn’t mean that volunteers have no role in health and social care though. Many volunteers from across the sector are already providing other essential services: from volunteer-delivered “home from hospital” schemes to lunch clubs and shopping services, driving people to GP and hospital visits, or acting as quality assessors for their local Healthwatch. And let’s not forget the 1.3 million older people who are providing unpaid care [pdf] for their loved ones – recent estimates put the value of informal care provided by older people at £11.4bn a year [pdf].

Up and down the UK, local people are volunteering to provide essential support for health and social care provision. Their contribution must be applauded and recognised as they continue to assist those who need it, now and in the future.

Talk to us on Twitter via @Gdnvoluntary and join our community for your free fortnightly Guardian Voluntary Sector newsletter, with analysis and opinion sent direct to you on the first and third Thursday of the month.

Tackling loneliness cannot rest with volunteers alone | Janet Morrison

Volunteers Succeed at Eliminating Food Waste and Hunger

Food waste and hunger are enormous global, environmental, and public health problems.  As overwhelming as these issues are, community groups, volunteers, local businesses, and organizations are working on trying to find a solution.

What started as a social action project in 2004, a few members of a small community in metro-Atlanta, Georgia took up the challenge to feed people in need and eliminate food waste.

And they’re succeeding!

The project grew into a non-profit organization with a team of more than 400 volunteer drivers, a network of more than 50 donors, and front-line agencies who feed the hungry on a daily basis.

Amazingly, the entire group has rescued more than 5.5 million pounds of food — enough to provide 4.6 million meals.  Here’s more of this motivating, against-all-odds story.

Food Waste and Hunger

About a third of the planet’s food goes to waste. That’s enough to feed two billion people.

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the World Resources Institute (WRI) report that about one-third of all food produced worldwide — worth around $ 1 trillion — are lost or wasted in food production and consumption systems.

Furthermore, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) cites the following:

“Forty percent of the food in the United States is never eaten. But at the same time, one in eight Americans struggles to put enough food on the table.”

Nearly 800 million people worldwide suffer from hunger. But according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, we squander enough food — globally, 2.9 trillion pounds a year — to feed every one of them more than twice over.

In developing nations, much of the food is lost after harvest, because of the lack of refrigeration, good roads, and adequate storage facilities. On the other hand, developed nations waste more food when retailers order, display, or serve too much.

Additionally, consumers waste food when they ignore leftovers in the back of their refrigerators — or toss perishable food out before it expires.

More Alarming Statistics of Wasted Food

Much of the wasted food in the U.S. ends up in landfills.  The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reports that food waste is the second largest category of municipal solid waste sent to landfills in the United States.

And it accounts for about 18 percent of the waste stream.  That’s more than 30 million tons of food waste that the U.S. sends to the landfills each year.

Additionally, according to NRDC, on average, people dining out leave 17 percent of meals uneaten and 55 percent of these potential leftovers are not taken home.

In spite of the dismal statistics on food waste — and the struggles and pain hungry people endure — community groups, organizations, local businesses, and volunteers in metro-Atlanta, Georgia are making headway in not wasting food and feeding people in need.

People Are Fed, Perishable Food Not Wasted

More than ten years ago, a few members of a community in metro-Atlanta, Georgia took up the challenge to feed people in need and eliminate food waste.  They wanted to take leftover fresh food from grocery stores and restaurants and quickly deliver it to agencies that provide food to families and individuals in need.

Since the first delivery was made in 2004, the group has “rescued” more than 5.5 million pounds of food.  And the group believes this figure equals enough to provide more than 4.6 million meals.

As success mounted in eliminating food waste and feeding people in their community, the group established itself as a non-profit organization called Second Helpings Atlanta.  Now, Second Helpings Atlanta has 62 donors, 31 partner agencies, and a team of more than 400 volunteer drivers who pick up and drop off perishable food every day.

Executive Director Joe Labriola says, “The challenge is getting the food from those who have it to those who need it, and that’s what we do.  We play a very specific role. We do 125 scheduled pickups and deliveries a week. We’ve gotten pretty good at this.”

Fresh Food versus Non-Perishable

Fresh food provides more nutrition than the non-perishable, processed diet that so many people eat — especially people with low or no income.  One of Second Helpings Atlanta’s goals is to change that standard, offering fresh food that will ideally help prompt healthier eating habits.

This year, the group has delivered 962,635 pounds of food and Labriola estimates they will pick up and deliver more than 1.3 million pounds by the end of the year.

“The reason we’re so focused on perishable food is that we’re providing nutrition to the diets of people who are surviving on processed food.  We’re breaking the cycle and hope that some of the health benefits of fresh food will start to kick in.”

According to Labriola, he sees no reason why this type of food waste program can’t easily be adopted anywhere. He adds that 40 percent of the food produced in the U.S. is never consumed.  And the average annual cost per household of food that is thrown out is $ 650.

Twenty percent of people in Georgia live in a food-insecure environment — meaning they’re not sure when they’re going to eat next.  “It’s a pretty grim story,” Labriola says. “But if we rescue just 15 percent of that food, we can feed 25 million Americans.”

How it’s Working

When people sign up to volunteer, they’re shown the available routes.  Then they’re asked to choose the route that would work best with their location and schedule.

Most pickups are regularly scheduled.  However, the group often gets calls from people holding weddings, bar mitzvahs, or festivals — knowing there will be leftover food at the end of the night.  Then, a call goes out to find a volunteer to help pickup and delivery the leftover food.

Volunteer drivers make food deliveries every day of the year, except Christmas.  Food pickups range in size — so people can pick them up no matter if they own a small sedan or a minivan. That way volunteering is within the reach of everyone.

From the time a driver leaves home — stopping to pick up the food and drop it off at a partner agency — it usually takes no longer than 90 minutes for he or she to return home.

Families Volunteer

Quite often, entire families will volunteer and work together for the weekly delivery service. Labriola says families volunteering are instrumental to educating younger generations about hunger and food waste.

For example, around Thanksgiving, a family with two young children met Labriola one day to pick up dozens of turkeys at a grocery store. The children looked amazed as they helped carry the delivery — bird-by-bird — from the store to the truck, and into the agency that would distribute them to families.  Labriola told the kids they just helped feed 225 families.  The children soon realized what they did.  One of the children said, “That’s as many kids that are in my school!”

The exemplary work and dedication exhibited by volunteers in the metro-Atlanta, Georgia community is a truly successful model of how to eliminate food waste and hunger.  Perhaps more community groups, organizations, local businesses, and volunteers will consider following their worthy example.

Volunteers Succeed at Eliminating Food Waste and Hunger

Grey army of five million volunteers "plugging gaps in social care"

RVS spokesman Steve Smith stated: “Local authorities have lower back on social care in the final few years and we know that austerity is here for a couple of many years to come.

“When you add to that the reality that the number of in excess of-80s is going to rise from three million nowadays to eight million by 2030, there is going to be an increasing role for the voluntary sector to step in and plug the gaps.

“Older men and women are going to be an escalating component of that, by delivering meals on wheels, day centres or other providers that would have been offered by the welfare state in the past.”

Local authorities minimize paying on adult social care by two per cent in real terms between 2012 and 2013, according to the Wellness and Social Care Data Centre. Nevertheless the need to have for social care continues to rise sharply.

When the NHS was set up in 1948 practically half of Britons did not reach retirement age. In contrast a little one born nowadays has a one particular in three chance of residing to be 100.

In addition, the informal “social glue” of households and neighbours seeking after OAPs has fragmented, with relatives more and more moving away from their parents and grandparents to find work and a million pensioners feeling unable to contact on neighbours for help, in accordance to a latest survey.

But the RVS is keen to get across the message that pensioners are not a burden on society: a current report advised that above-65s created a net contribution of £40 billion to the economic system via taxes and investing, a figure expected to rise to £77bn by 2030.

The figure is far larger if the hidden worth of volunteering is additional. More than-60s contribute the equivalent of £10bn in unpaid operate each and every yr, the RVS says.

They include Alan Alford, 74, from Bristol, who will be 1 of 12 Diamond Champions presented with awards by the Duchess of Cornwall at Thursday’s reception.

He clocks up an average of 25 hrs unpaid operate per week by pushing a snacks trolley around Frenchay Hospital, driving pensioners to day centres and volunteering at a regional hospice.

Since he offered his burglar alarm business and took early retirement in 1997, he has contributed much more than 22,000 hrs of unpaid work.

He stated: “When I was 21 I had a significant motorbike accident that left me in hospital for 9 months, and I received this kind of fantastic care I usually stated I desired to give something back a single day.

“Volunteering gives me such fulfillment, simply because you see the big difference if helps make to people’s lives.

“Just the other day a lady in hospital asked if I could arrange for her phone to be topped up, and when I had finished undertaking the trolley I received her a new card and took it to her. She hugged me and burst into tears, just for undertaking one thing as straightforward as that.

“I also drive a chap who is blind and has Parkinson’s to a day centre once a week, and he’s a distinct man or woman when he will get there. It’s fantastic.”

Scientific studies have proven that as well as benefiting people who are getting assisted, volunteering improves the psychological and physical health of volunteers.

It can also decrease the charge of hospital admissions. “We discovered final 12 months that 150,000 older men and women got no help when they returned property from hospital,” stated Mr Smith. “Nationally there is a 15 per cent re-admission charge within 28 days of discharge amid in excess of-75s.

“We carried out a task in Leicester and made positive men and women had support when they acquired back residence, like producing confident there was food in the cupboards and the heating worked, and the rate of hospital readmissions halved in six weeks.”

Grey army of five million volunteers "plugging gaps in social care"