Befriending Care Home Residents

We mobilise trained volunteers to come alongside care home residents, doing activities together that build companionship.
Research shows that care home residents are twice as likely to feel severely lonely as older people living at home.

How it works

We recruit and train volunteers to offer friendship and support to elderly residents in care homes. Prior to the pandemic we had over 60 volunteers across all the care homes in the London Borough of Richmond, and had started to expand nationally to the Isle of Wight, Belfast, Liverpool, Hampshire, Billinghurst and beyond. We're starting to get volunteers back into care homes as they gradually open more to visitors.

Support for care home residents includes befriending, helping older people with their digital skills to enable them stay connected with their family, reading aloud to the visually impaired, going for a walk with a resident, playing board games and so on. The list is endless - anything that a resident enjoys doing that our volunteers can help facilitate.

All our volunteers are DBS checked and have been through our vetting processes and training programme.

Where we operate

What else we've been doing during Covid-19

With the ongoing restrictions in place to reduce the spread of the coronavirus, we have had to be creative in finding other ways to connect with care home residents and support staff.  Here are some of things we've been up to:
Connecting Care Home residents and their loved ones using Alexa
Alexa devices can be a great way to help residents and their relatives stay connected, especially when visiting is restricted. When the resident has an Alexa speaker set up in their room a relative can use it like a hands free phone and "drop in" on the resident to have a chat.

This is particularly helpful for residents who might struggle with using a phone, or if relatives are having to ring on the care home phone to get in touch. Once the Alexa is set up it does not require any supervision from staff, freeing up staff time, and helping relatives to stay connected with ease.

"I can not speak highly enough about your service. The quality of the people your organisation sends to me is excellent."

- A CARE HOME MANAGER


There are about 12,500 care homes for older people across the UK, and about 50,000 churches. We'd love to see each care home adopted by a local church with trained volunteers befriending residents. 

Get in touch

Need a volunteer?

Do you know a someone who would benefit from a visitor?

Want to volunteer

Would you like to befriend a care home resident?

Have a question

Any other questions you want to ask us?