Loneliness: Christmas

(asked on 6th January 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what steps her Department is taking with local authorities to promote schemes which tackle loneliness and social isolation at Christmas time.


Answered by
Helen Whately Portrait
Helen Whately
Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
This question was answered on 15th January 2020

Government’s strategy on tackling loneliness stresses the important contribution of all parts of society, including local authorities, throughout the year not just at Christmas.

Government’s work with local authorities includes: working with three local authorities to pilot ways of making information about local activities and services addressing loneliness more easily available; and working with the Local Government Association and National Association of Local Councils to publish a comprehensive guide outlining how councils can create the right structures and conditions locally to tackle loneliness.

In addition, the Let’s Talk Loneliness communications campaign promotes many schemes across the country that bring people together. The campaign website hosts a toolkit of resources and case studies; these have been shared with a network of over 300 organisations and have been widely used.

The government has also established the £11.5m Building Connections Fund; 126 grants were made to successful applicants in December 2018. Projects are now underway, bringing people together across the country. On 15 October 2019 the Minister for Civil Society, Baroness Barran, announced a new £2 million fund to help organisations at the frontline of tackling loneliness across the country.

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