‘As you get older, remember you have two hands: The first is to help yourself, the second is to help others’
A slight re-working of a famous quote attributed to Audrey Hepburn
Jane Spence is a volunteer at SCCCC who has been visiting Julie Whittaker most weeks since June 2023. Julie is 93 years old and has been resident in a care home since August 2016 after suffering from encephalitis which left her with severe communication problems and unable to live alone.
What motivated you to start volunteering for SCCCC?
I first heard about SCCCC from my husband Martin who attended a presentation from Ericka Hill, SCCCC’s dynamic fundraising, marketing and communications officer. Martin was impressed by Ericka’s energy and enthusiasm and mentioned the charity when he got home. We have five elderly relatives on my husband’s side who are all needing an increasing level of support and care. My elderly in-laws live in North Yorkshire and I visit them every fortnight and stay over with them to provide some help and company. With regular help from the family they have - so far- been able to remain in their own home. Seeing the needs of elderly people close up like this, I became very aware of the number of older folk in society who would really benefit from some regular companionship and I wanted to help. I’m now retired and my family have grown up but I previously worked as a primary school teacher. There are similarities between young children and the older generation; both groups can be very blunt and happy to share exactly what they think! I particularly enjoy seeing young children interacting with the elderly; everyone gets so much out of it. I wish that we could enable different age groups to engage more and take better care of one another, to build more of a sense of community and to encourage us all to look after one another.
What training did you receive from SCCCC?
I have excellent support from the SCCCC team and the induction process went really well. My coordinator met me a few times at a local café near our flat and it was relaxed and friendly. I was given clear guidelines regarding my volunteering role and the DBS process was quick and efficient. I was given details of various potential people to visit and we decided that Julie would be a good match. Charlotte from SCCCC visited Julie and her daughter Sue at the care home to sound things out and explain the process which I thought was very thorough. My visits have worked well. Although Julie can’t be very active any longer, she really enjoys watching sports and was an enthusiastic fell-walker for many years. I am a committed runner and outdoors enthusiast so that is something we share. If the weather is fine when I visit, we always walk down to the garden in the care home and enjoy walking around and looking at the flowers. Although Julie has a limited vocabulary, I can usually tune in to what she is saying and we have a few props to help us. Things like photos and prompt sheets with simple graphics and a few techniques to aid understanding can be really helpful. We both enjoy talking about family! I have three grown-up children (of whom I am very proud of course!) and Julie has a notice board in her room covered with a range of family photos. There’s everything from her wedding pictures in the early 1950s to photos of her great-grandchildren. It’s a really useful reference point when we’re chatting.
SCCCC contacts me regularly to make sure everything is going smoothly, checking in with Julie’s daughter Sue to make sure things are working well from Julie’s perspective too.
Julie’s family is really appreciative. ‘Getting to know Jane has made an amazing difference to Mum’s morale. It became obvious last year that Mum was often lonely and longed for more contact. The family supports as best we can but most family members live some distance away and there is a limit to how often we can all visit. Mum looks forward to Jane’s visits each week, which has lifted her mood; she is so much happier. As a family, we can’t thank Jane enough for her generosity.’
If you would like to volunteer like Jane and make a difference to an isolated older person in your community please contact: volunteers@scccc.co.uk
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