A MAJOR new campaign hopes to recruit dozens of volunteers to work in communities and hospitals across Yorkshire to help ease “unprecedented” pressures on public services.
A Yorkshire-born collective for the “huge hidden workforce of women working from their kitchen tables”, aimed at helping them feel less lonely and more connected, has now grown to more than 2,000 members nationwide in 40 groups - and is expanding into Europe.
Blind and partially sighted people in Yorkshire are being “left out of everyday life”, with almost seven out of 10 saying they feel socially isolated, a new report says.
A “VITAL” resource that helps hundreds of isolated older people keep in touch with their communities could face closure after it was forced to dip into its reserves to fill a funding black hole running into thousands of pounds.
A MAJOR new campaign that urges people to look after their neighbours and take part in “random acts of kindness” in a bit to tackle loneliness will get underway in West Yorkshire and Harrogate next month.
IT was a £78m lottery-funded plan with big ambitions - to improve the lives of those over 50s suffering most at the grip of loneliness, and to find and share new ways of tackling the issue - with two Yorkshire cities right at its heart.
Kim Leadbeater didn’t set out for a campaigning career in the limelight, but the events of June 16, 2016, when her older sister and best friend, the Batley MP Jo Cox, was murdered, “changed that forever”.
The Duchess of Cornwall has praised The Yorkshire Post for five years of campaigning to highlight the devastating effects of “crushing loneliness”, and recognised the work of volunteers across the region who work to “change lives for the better”.
BEFRIENDING schemes are nothing new, but there’s something a little different about Doncaster’s b:friend, which has just received £100,000 from the Government's loneliness fund to expand across South Yorkshire.
HER appointment as Loneliness Minister, in the wake of the resignation of Tracey Crouch, came less than a month after the Prime Minister launched the Government’s long-awaited Loneliness Strategy.
Loneliness: The Hidden Epidemic was launched in The Yorkshire Post in February 2014 with two main aims, for loneliness to be universally recognised as a health priority and to encourage our readers to volunteer for support services.
Loneliness is as damaging to health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day, and can not only impact on conditions such as coronary heart disease, stroke and high blood pressure - but also affect how we recover from illness.
Political interest in loneliness has “rocketed” in the last five years leading to increased services for the lonely, a leading campaigner has said, but attention must now turn to addressing the emotional needs of those suffering.
The region’s council’s are now spending 55 per cent more on initiatives tackling loneliness than they were when the Yorkshire Post launched its award-winning loneliness campaign five years ago, with many authorities planning to increase spending in the coming months, as the epidemic continues to blight the lives of thousands of people.
A THOUSAND new recruits are to be signed up by the NHS to help GPs deal with some of the “scourges of modern life” from loneliness to mental health issues.
A Yorkshire Dance project is “bringing joy” into the lives of people with dementia living in care homes in Leeds, while helping to tackle loneliness and social isolation.
