To receive a presentation from Rebecca Brooker, Communities and Prevention Lead for Surrey County Council.
Minutes:
The Committee received a presentation from Natalie Gordon, the Communities and Prevention Officer for Adult Social Care at Surrey County Council on loneliness and social isolation.
Members were advised that there was a difference between Loneliness and isolation People could be isolated (alone) yet not feel lonely. People could be surrounded by other people, yet still feel lonely. The distinction between these two concepts was ften overlooked by policy makers and researchers, which made it difficult to understand what could help people reduce their feeling of loneliness.
Loneliness was a subjective feeling about the gap between a person’s desired levels of social contact and their actual level of social contact. It referred to the perceived quality of the person’s relationships. Loneliness was never desired and lessening these feelings could take a long time. Social isolation was an objective measure of the number of contacts that people have. It was about the quantity and not quality of relationships. People may choose to have a small number of contacts. When they felt socially isolated, this could be overcome relatively quickly by increasing the number of people they are in contact with.
The Committee was informed that loneliness and social isolation were different but related concepts. Social isolation could lead to loneliness and loneliness could lead to social isolation. Both may also occur at the same time. People could experience different levels of social isolation and loneliness over their lifetime, moving in and out of these states as their personal circumstances change. Loneliness and social isolation also shared many factors that were associated with increasing the likelihood of people experiencing each, such as deteriorating health, and sensory and mobility impairments.
Loneliness was an emerging social issue for many years, with organisations including Age UK and the Campaign to End Loneliness raising its profile. Most recently, the Jo Cox Commission started a national conversation on loneliness and successfully encouraged the Government to accept many of its recommendations with the appointment of a Minister for Loneliness to take forward the work. With this new impetus, it was important for policy makers, practitioners and researchers to understand the distinction between loneliness and social isolation in order to ensure that solutions were not focussed simply on increasing opportunities for people to meet or speak, but on helping build, maintain and re-establish meaningful relationships. That was, bringing people together to increase the number of social contacts was not an end in itself – to combat loneliness, the quality of relationships needed to be addressed.
Loneliness and isolation, or social isolation, were often discussed together and even used interchangeably. While they were related, they were distinct concepts. Loneliness could be understood as an individual’s personal, subjective sense of lacking desired affection, closeness, and social interaction with others. Although loneliness had a social aspect, it was also defined by an individual’s subjective emotional state. Loneliness was more dependent on the quality than the number of relationships.
It is possible to be lonely but not to be socially isolated - research shows that older people in large households and care homes are more likely to report loneliness. It is also quite possible to be socially isolated but not lonely. Some people who live on their own or in remote places may not feel or report loneliness.
Loneliness was a key issue across the life course – it affects us all at some point in our lives. It affected a large number of older people: Thirty-six per cent of people aged 65 and over in the UK felt out of touch with the pace of modern life and nine per cent say they felt cut off from society. Half of all older people (about five million) considered the television as their main form of company. Young people were also affected – 43% of 17-25 years olds feeling lonely even though most of that number will be in education or employment and seeing people every day.
There have been several studies that have identified a range of factors associated with being lonely in older age. These factors included: social networks (living alone, being widowed, divorced or otherwise outside of marital or civil union, contacts with friends and family, social participation); health (unmet social care needs, poor health, mobility limitations, cognitive and sensory impairment), individual characteristics (age, ethnicity, sexual orientation, low income, retirement) and neighbourhood characteristics (structures of buildings and streets, provision of local amenities, territorial boundaries, area reputation, neighbourliness, material deprivation of area of residence).
When viewing the relative risk of loneliness in Waverley, there were 16 neighbourhoods that had a very high risk of loneliness. The Communities and Prevention team were working on a range of projects to try and turn the tide on loneliness and isolation in Surrey. Not all these projects were about older people, but they generated capacity to support older people, or provide preventative interventions so the next generation of older people were less lonely and isolated.
The Committee thanked Natalie for the extremely informative presentation which had a good linkage with the work that had been carried out with the Health inequalities review.