AGE ACTION ALLIANCE
LONELINESS & ISOLATION WORKING GROUP MEETING held 6th June ’19
The meeting hosted by The National Lottery Community Fund, London was opened at 13-15 by the Chair Shelagh Marshall with eleven members present. Five Members sent their apologies.
Age Action Alliance Update – Alan Beazley (ENEI) reported that a meeting of Working Group Chairs had taken place on 23rd May. New Chairs are being sought for the Money Matters and Safe, Warm Homes Groups. I commented that Group Chairs were being asked to do far more than in the past and should expect to receive more support if Groups were to be successful. Our L&I Group was in my view an example of what could be achieved citing the highlighting of small organisations that had raised their profile through membership of the group and the access it provided to ‘big players’ and those with the ear of Government.
ENEI has successfully secured a website grant from the Transformation Foundation. This grant will be used to update both the ENEI and the AAA websites.
National Lottery Community Fund (NLCF) - Sophy Proctor (NLCF Head of Funding) provided an account of how the NLCF has transformed its approach to funding putting people and communities at the heart of its grants. NLCF had recruited an additional 120 people to eight regional groups in the last year. Over this same period more than half a billion pounds had benefitted 11,000 projects enabling people and communities to bring their ideas to life.
Awards for All – funding £300 to £10k. Larger Grants – are made through a variety of programmes covering every UK nation. NLCF is actively developing its Partnerships Programme. Ageing Better - is a six year £78 million investment to improve the lives of people over 50 by addressing social isolation and loneliness.
Digital Participation - Leela Damodaran gave a short introductory presentation on the digital participation of older people. Leela is the new Chair of the AAA Digital Participation Group and was keen to expand the group to include a wide range of public, private and voluntary organisations. Its aim would be to promote proactive and confident involvement of older people in the digital world and to act as a ‘think tank’ for policy, strategy and process.
One Digital - Sarah Parkes (AgeUK) gave a presentation on One Digital, a Big Lottery funded project involving AgeUK, Digital Unite, SCVO, Clarion Futures and Citizens Online. Some presentation observations:- Older people currently not online are highly likely to remain so. Digital technology is rapidly developing and will leave many people behind. Digital exclusion will become less about whether you are online and more about what you are doing online. Technology has the potential to alleviate loneliness and social isolation.
One Digitals’ Aim – 8 Local AgeUK’s – engaging with 300 Local organisations --- training 420 Digital Champions --- reaching 12,600 older people.
The next meeting of the group is to be held on Tuesday 24th September ‘19
Peter Frakes (EMLLF)
Janice Cooper, 6th June 2019