Thanks for 'priceless' volunteers who help lonely

Volunteers were thanked at a celebration organised by the HOPE project

"Priceless" volunteers have been thanked for going to "extraordinary lengths" to support socially isolated people in Wolverhampton.

About 130 carry out weekly visits or otherwise support people struggling with their mental health after the Covid pandemic.

Project coordinator Geoff Griffin said the unpaid participants made a huge difference to those they helped.

"The work that they do is priceless," he explained. "It's just absolutely incredible, words fail me at times."

The Holistic Opportunities Preventing Exclusion (HOPE) project is a partnership between The Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust (RWT) Charity and Wolverhampton Voluntary and Community Action (WVCA).

It started in April last year, funded partly by a £220,000 Covid recovery grant.

The city's social prescribing service had referred patients ranging in age from 13 to 97 to the scheme, Mr Griffin explained.

The biggest need was for befriending visits, he added, describing how a volunteer had helped a woman in her 90s set up email.

"Her situation was transformed by being able to do this – she was able to interact not only with the volunteer but also with members of her family," he said.

Volunteer Adesuwa Sandra Usonegbu, 48, visits a widow struggling with loneliness.

"We talk and we watch TV together and we learn from and support each other," she explained.

"She looks forward to my visits and I look forward to spending time with her."

Another volunteer, Idris Azeez, feels he is "giving something back" in his support for a wheelchair user he visits regularly.

"My 11-year-old son Abdul has cerebral palsy and over the years he has needed healthcare which has always been there for us – now I can return that kindness," he said.

Meanwhile, Paul Edmonds has spent time building trust with a local resident whose husband has dementia.

"It is so lovely that she can take some time for herself when I visit to sit with her husband and [she has] some respite as she is her husband's main carer," he said.

Volunteers Idris Azeez, Adesuwa Usonegbu, and Paul Edmunds visit people who feel isolated in their homes

Mr Griffin said: "They go to extraordinary lengths. A lot of them volunteer as well as doing full-time work. A lot of them use public transport, they travel up to an hour.

"What they do, selflessly, is just extraordinary, out of the sense that they just want to help."