PEOPLE in Redditch and Alcester who want to reach out and improve the lives of older people in the community can do so – by offering them a seat at the dinner table.
New figures have revealed that 31 per cent of people aged over 70 in the Midlands are skipping meals due to loneliness – and that a quarter of these do so every day.
In a bid to help combat this, Contact the Elderly and Bisto have launched this year’s Spare Chair Sunday campaign. Spare Chair Sunday aims to tackle the issue by bringing people together over a home-cooked favourite, a Sunday roast.
First launched in 2015, the project encourages people to offer a ‘spare chair’ at their Sunday lunch tables to a Contact the Elderly older guest and their volunteer driver, to share a warm lunch together.
Contact the Elderly, which has five branches in Redditch, offers a free monthly Sunday afternoon tea parties for small groups of older people aged over 75 who live alone, and Spare Chair Sunday aims to build upon this model.
Anyone interested in taking part can visit Contact the Elderly online.
