Hampton & Hampton Hill Voluntary Care provides a Befriending Service that can offer regular visits to you at home by one of our volunteers.
After an initial meeting with the Befriending Coordinator we will look for a volunteer who has similar interests to you and introduce you to them.
Your regular visit offers you the chance to have someone to chat to and catch up with local news.
Support during a difficult time
The Adult Social Care Team contacted our Befriending Coordinator to see if we could help Joe, who has dementia and is prone to getting lost if he leaves his familiar surroundings.
Joe’s wife needed to attend hospital for regular treatment and the social worker felt Joe needed someone to sit with him, for company, during these times until the paid care worker arrived.
Our Befriending Coordinator arranged to visit both Joe and Mary to talk about their needs and see what we could offer. This was an unusual situation because they both needed quite a lot of intensive support over a short period, but we did our best to help.
We managed to find a team of befrienders to take turns to support Joe while his wife went for treatment, which ended up being for 5 days a week for 6 weeks. We also found regular drivers to take Mary to hospital.
With our help, Mary was able to focus on her own health and not worry about Joe while she was attending hospital. She had confidence in the service we gave to her husband and did not have to stress about using public transport herself.
After Mary completed her treatment, we were able to settle back into a regular routine with our volunteer befriender visiting Joe on a weekly basis. We did this for a further two years but as Joe declined, he went into a care home.
We didn’t turn our back on Joe and we continue to pop by to see him in his new home and also give Mary a call once a month. Mary is well supported by her family, but they were both very grateful for all the help we gave them during a very difficult time.
