Launching Our Free Companionship Visits
Published: 23/11/2018
Research from Age UK, at the end of 2017, found that nearly a million older people feel lonelier at Christmas time, two-fifths of whom have been widowed.
With this in mind, Bluebird Care Hounslow & Chiswick have launched a service to their customers where they will be providing free companionship visits of up to one hour, to customers who will benefit from them. Although the Care Assistants are paid, the customers will not be charged.The service kicked off with a visit from Care Assistant Nicky, to customer Peter. Peter, who used to work in security has epilepsy and recently underwent brain surgery. He has visits from care assistants around four times a week, usually to help with household tasks but also for a chat. This week, due to the new service, Nicky was able to visit him for an extra hour at no extra cost to Peter.
We spoke to Nicky after her first free companionship visit to Peter:
“It’s really touching how much our visits mean to the customers, so it’s really lovely being able to help them out a little more – especially around this time of year!”
The new service is extremely important for Bluebird Care Hounslow & Chiswick, and was launched out of a passion to do their bit to help further relieve loneliness.
Care Manager Halina also had a few words to say about the new scheme:
“As Nicky said, the visits do mean the world to our customers. It’s lovely being able to show them that they can get more help if they need it without the worry of the added cost. Around Christmas time especially, a lot of older people do feel lonely, and here at Bluebird Care Hounslow & Chiswick we want to minimise that number as much as possible.”
