Breakfast seminar

“We’re deliberately vague in our definition of who we are and what we’re about,” CEO of the Silver Line helpline, Sophie Andrews, told Care Conversation delegates. This was because of the stigma that still persisted around issues of loneliness and isolation, she said.

The free, 24-hour helpline was now coming up to its first birthday, and her organisation also trained volunteers to make weekly calls to people identified as lonely and isolated. Around 40% of helpline callers were men – “a hard-to-reach group within a hard-to-reach group” – and the helpline had also come to be seen as a “Childline for older people”, with 5% of callers reporting abuse.

The demand for her organisation’s services was “huge and growing”, she said, but one of the key opportunities for the third sector was partnership. “We started Silver Line because we realised there were lots of good services out there but people weren’t connecting to them. We need to be working together.”

One in four people experienced mental health problems at some point in their life, local CEO of Mind, Alex Tambourides, told the seminar. His charity had a federal structure – a national body with 148 affiliated local organisations providing services, many of which were commissioned by the NHS. “One of the great benefits of the voluntary sector is that we’re quite lithe,” he said. “If we see there’s a need for something we can go for funding and get it set up within a year. There’s a lot of talk about integrating health and social care within the NHS, but in the voluntary sector we’ve been doing that for years.” Trust in the ‘establishment’ was also at a low, which meant people were more likely to approach charities instead, he said.

“In the voluntary sector there are always opportunities,” he continued. “Clearly there have been funding problems across all sectors since 2008, so the challenge is to still provide quality services.” Being a third sector organisation also meant ethical choices, however. “In an increasingly competitive healthcare market, how low is your price? Are you willing to put people on minimum wage or the London Living Wage? Are you willing to put people on zero-hours contracts?”

The economic climate had led to much higher levels of workplace stress and mental health problems, with a huge financial impact on employers, and Mind provided training and consultancy services to help employers better manage the mental health and wellbeing of their workforce. “It’s about taking a challenge and turning it into an opportunity.”

“We’ve got a vision of a world where hearing loss and deafness don’t label people,” said Action on Hearing Loss CEO Paul Breckell. One in six people were affected by some sort of hearing loss, he said, and as well as supporting people, his organisation campaigned, advocated and funded research – something that was “very exciting, as there are cures on the horizon”.

The voluntary sector was a vital resource “just because of the sheer scale”, he told the seminar. “There are 40,000 charities doing something in this space, with some great services being delivered. We also both advocate and serve. I get really angry when I hear politicians say that charities shouldn’t campaign – that’s nonsense. Advocating for the right services and then being able to deliver some of them is part of the magic mix.” The sector was also able to take risks in a way that was not always possible for the statutory and private sectors, and there were additional opportunities around being a specialist provider with expertise. “Even though it’s tough out there, the voluntary sector can really shine through,” he said. 

One ‘huge’ challenge, however, was funding of the NHS, he stated. “We love the NHS in this country, but we don’t want to fund it. There’s a real disconnect – wanting Scandinavian-style healthcare with US-style taxation – and no real political will to have that conversation. And if it’s tough in healthcare, it’s even tougher in social care.”

Funding constraints also meant the voluntary sector having to step in to plug gaps, delegates heard. “We’re becoming an out-of-hours crisis number,” said Sophie Andrews. “We’re very happy to take those calls, but we’d like to work in partnership with clinical commissioning groups and GPs and see some of the savings they’re getting by telling people to call us.”

The event ended with the panel sharing what they would most like to see politicians do after the next election. “Austerity is terrible for people’s health – stop it,” said Alex Tambourides, while Sophie Andrews wanted the government to “start properly funding” the third sector. “Properly fund the Care Act,” added Paul Breckell. “We’re walking blindly into a situation where people are living longer and need support in later life, and we’re just not stepping up.”