The next Ready Friends Befriending Forum is on Thursday 5 December 12.30- 5 and the theme will be: The role of technology in reducing loneliness and social isolation
Book here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/befriending-forum-tickets-81451994107I
The agenda will include:
A networking lunch and sharing good news.
Teenage Loneliness and Technology
Wavelength
Britain’s oldest charity fighting loneliness with technology – since 1939! Wavelength gives radios, TVs and tablets to people living in poverty to overcome loneliness. Find out how they can support your work in Reading.
Get Online
Get Online Reading aims to use Reading’s highly literate population to help those who don’t have the skills or opportunity to make use of the internet. Find out where they run drop in sessions across Reading and how they can support your service users to connect with others locally or across the globe. Get Online is always looking for new partners – are you their next customer?
Remap Berkshire
Having a disability makes you even more at risk of loneliness and social isolation, especially if you’re unable to get out to events and activities. Remap provides free custom-made equipment that is not available to go out and buy, for people with disabilities. Their skilled volunteers provide innovative, practical solutions to everyday challenges encountered by disabled people.
Community Confidence Conductors Project meeting 4-5pm
For anyone interested in progressing a local project to provide ‘confidence conductor’ volunteers to travel with a person on a mainstream bus to their destination and back again. These would be people who were anxious about or lacked confidence in using a bus or who needed just a little help to make the journey. This potential partnership project was proposed at the May Befriending Forum.
The special evening for volunteers in Reading was a huge success! Read the RVA News article from this link: http://rva.org.uk/article/celebrating-friendship-volunteers/
Befriending Forum September 2019
Another great afternoon packed with networking, information, training and good news from across the sector! Click here for the PowerPoint presentation: Befriending Foum 26 09 19 presentation v1 Click here for the full report. Report from Sept 2019 Befriending Forum
- a presentation by the national organisation Befriending Networks
- hearing local funders’ perspectives
- a data visualisation workshop –
- reimagining impact and developing good practice
Our quarterly Befriending Forums are for anyone from local communities, groups and organisations interested in helping reduce loneliness and social isolation in Reading. If you would like to get advance notice, please email Rhiannon to sign up to Ready Friends mailings.
You can read the full Befriending Forum reports for February 2019 here , for May 2019 here
The next Befriending Forum will be on 5 December from 12.30pm.
New! Ready Friends Toolkit.
Ready Friends, in partnership with Reading Neighbourhoods Network, have launched a new toolkit for anyone interested in taking action on loneliness and social isolation. Click here for access to the online toolkit where you can also download an 8-page booklet to share.
Social Isolation and Loneliness in Reading: Full Report
Throughout March and April 2017, 437 people filled out a questionnaire so we could understand more about loneliness and social isolation in Reading. The report will help to inform local organisations how they can respond to these issues.
The survey has highlighted who is most likely to be experiencing loneliness and social isolation, how it impacts on different groups of people, what barriers they face to being more socially active and what they would like to be doing if those barriers could be overcome.
Read Making Reading Friendlier, A Ready Friends Action Plan 2019-20
Befriending in Reading
See current befriending opportunities.
Look at the range of befriending schemes in Reading.
