London Befriending Scheme
Take a closer look at the flyer here:
NARPO London Brefriending
Find out more below about the London Befriending Scheme from London NEC Rep and Welfare Lead, Phil Van Tromp
BEFRIENDING Quite rightly Welfare plays a significant part of our overall purpose within NARPO. We’re all now living longer due to modern medicine and lifestyle and as a result we have increased numbers of former colleagues and partners who are suffering from varying degrees of dementia or associated conditions. The majority of us don’t want to end up in care homes with all the financial and administrative baggage that that entails but would prefer to soldier on in our own home, more often than not on our own. My Branch, like others, have always looked after our own and this has historically been by phone and more often than not via sign posting. This is clearly better than nothing but nothing beats the personal touch and the face to face interaction. We could even outsource this and ask for volunteers to do this for us. Wouldn’t it be better however if we were able to find volunteers amongst our own membership who could readily identify with those members we’re visiting? Befriending is not necessarily Welfare. I believe there is a distinct difference. My experience suggests that four out of five requests for help don’t necessarily need welfare knowledge or a welfare background. More often than not it’s the companionship and company that’s missing. One of our members may have recently lost a long-term partner or may not have seen anyone from week to week. They might have mobility issues and merely want someone to buy them a paper or get them a pint of milk and there’s no-one suitable to ask. What they’re ideally after is someone who can perhaps pop in and see them for an hour or so on a regular basis, make them a cuppa and for want of a better expression ‘chew the cud’. If there is then anything additional that that person needs help with, a Welfare officer can intervene. As my Branch Welfare Lead I was keen to change the face of how we, as a branch, dealt with the considerable numbers of people who wanted nothing more than a bit of companionship. Initially, via social media and our internal publication, it became clear that there were many members who wanted to help other former colleagues who were perhaps less able or fortunate than themselves, for whatever reason. Linking them together would be easy and Bob’s your uncle and off you go. It’s that simple. Back when I joined the job in the early seventies that would have been the case. Unfortunately, life’s not that simple and what would have been agreed on the back of a cigarette packet isn’t necessarily acceptable today. Even arranging for someone to visit someone else has potential pitfalls and things that can go wrong. An individual with no malice but possible memory issues could suggest that after a visit some money has gone missing and the only person who could have taken it is the person who’s just visited. We now live in a blame culture and we all know that where there’s blame there’s a claim. Some training or guidance therefore would really be useful and my branch has now introduced a short virtual training session to cover awareness and the possibilities of pitfalls. This is not to suggest that having been a career police officer, you need to be told how to talk to people, but we do this purely to make one aware of everything one might come across. This includes topics such as respecting confidentiality and knowing when to ask for help oneself. It’s also easy to impose one’s own values on others without realising it so we ask all our befrienders to stay in touch. As I suggested when I started writing this piece, there’s nothing difficult about running a Befriender Scheme. My branch joined the on-line Befriender Network when we started out. There’s everything anyone will need to know on their site: Befriending Networks | The Network for Befriending Organisations
Two years on and this project is still evolving in my Branch. We continue to take on more Befrienders and we try and visit as many of our vulnerable and lonely retired colleagues as we can. You really don’t need to be experienced in Welfare to become a Befriender. Please feel free to contact me if any of the above information resonates with you and you’d like to know more. Phil Van Tromp London Branch Welfare Lead. phil.vantromp@narpo.org