We now move to the short debate, so, if you are leaving the Chamber, please do so quietly, quickly. I’m going to call on Caroline Jones to speak on the topic she has chosen. Caroline.

Diolch, Ddirprwy Lywydd. I have agreed to give a minute of my time to Joyce Watson, Janet Finch-Saunders and Mike Hedges.

The following was written in 1966, and more eloquently highlights the topic of loneliness and isolation than any words that I could conjure.

What do you see, nurses, what do you see? / What are you thinking, when looking at me? / A crabbit old woman, not very wise, / Uncertain of habit, with faraway eyes, / Who dribbles her food and makes no reply / When you say in a loud voice, “I do wish you’d try”. / Who seems not to notice the things that you do / And forever is losing a stocking or shoe. / Who, unresisting or not, lets you do as you will / With bathing and feeding the long day to fill. / Is that what you’re thinking, is that what you see? / Then open your eyes, nurse, you’re looking at me. / I’ll tell you who I am as I sit here so still! / As I rise at your bidding, as I eat at your will. / I’m a small child of 10 with a father and mother, / Brothers and sisters, who love one another, / A young girl of 16 with wings on her feet, / Dreaming that soon now a lover she’ll meet, / A bride soon at 20—my heart gives a leap, / Remembering the vows that I promised to keep. / At 25 now I have young of my own / Who need me to build a secure happy home; / A woman of 30, my young now grow fast, / Bound to each other with ties that should last; / At 40, my young sons have grown and are gone, / But my man’s beside me to see I don’t mourn; / At 50 once more babies play around my knee, / Again we know children, my loved one and me. / Dark days are upon me, my husband is dead, / I look at the future, I shudder with dread, / For my young are all rearing young of their own. / And I think of the years and the love that I’ve known; / I’m an old woman now and nature is cruel—/ ‘Tis her jest to make old age look like a fool. / The body is crumbled, grace and vigour depart, / There is now a stone where I once had a heart, / But inside this old carcass, a young girl still dwells, / And now and again my battered heart swells, / I remember the joy, I remember the pain, / And I’m loving and living life over again. / I think of the years, all too few, gone too fast. / And accept the stark fact that nothing can last. / So open your eyes, nurses, open and see, / Not a crabbit old woman, look closer— / See Me.’

And here is the nurse’s reply to this poem:

”What do you see?”, you ask, “What do we see?” / Yes, we are thinking when looking at thee! / We may seem to be hard when we hurry and fuss, / But there’s many of you, and too few of us.

We would like far more time to sit by you and talk, / To bathe you and feed you and help you to walk. / To hear of your lives and the things you have done; / Your childhood, your husband, your daughter, your son. / But time is against us, there’s too much to do— / Patients too many, and nurses too few. / We grieve when we see you so sad and alone, / With nobody near you, no friends of your own.

We feel all your pain, and know of your fear / That nobody cares now your end is near. / But nurses are people with feelings as well, / And when we’re together you’ll often hear tell / Of the dearest old Gran in the very end bed, / And the lovely old Dad, and the things that he said, / We speak with compassion and love, and feel sad / When we think of your lives and the joy that you’ve had, / When the time has arrived for you to depart, / You leave us behind with an ache in our heart.

When you sleep the long sleep, no more worry or care, / There are other old people, and we must be there. / So please understand if we hurry and fuss— / There are many of you, / And so few of us.’

This poignant prose helps bring home the daily reality of many older people in our society. According to an Age Cymru survey undertaken in 2014, as many as 75,000 over-65s living in Wales say they are lonely. Nearly two thirds of women have reported being concerned about loneliness in old age. The WRVS found that 75 per cent of those older than 75 who lived alone felt lonely. They also found that older men in Wales were the loneliest in the UK.

Research shows that loneliness and social isolation are as damaging to our health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. Loneliness increases the chances of an early death by around 45 per cent. Loneliness is associated with an increased risk of developing coronary heart disease and stroke. Loneliness increases the risk of high blood pressure. Lonely individuals are also at higher risk of the onset of disability. One study concludes that lonely people have a 64 per cent increased chance of developing clinical dementia.

So, what can we do to combat this hidden and silent killer? The older people’s commissioner has called for the Public Health (Wales) Bill to place a duty on public services boards to tackle loneliness and isolation as part of their well-being campaign—calls that I wholeheartedly support. Age Cymru operate age well centres in north Wales in an effort to integrate older people into their local communities and prevent them feeling isolated. The Men’s Sheds movement has established centres in Wales. The movement, which started in Australia, is a new way for men to pursue their interests, develop new ones, belong to a unique group, feel useful, fulfilled, and have a sense of belonging. But I want to focus on a Welsh group that was established to tackle loneliness and isolation in west Wales—the welcome visitor at home project. Welcome visitors all have great listening skills and appropriate professional training. The visitors all display professionalism, are empathic and deal with the older people they work with with a great deal of sincerity, integrity and respect. These volunteers really get to know the older people they visit. They visit each person over the course of 10 face-to-face visits and utilise low-key reminiscence to look at their life story in a way that helps them to gain insight from their life experiences and to feel good about themselves. The Alzheimer’s Society recommended the use of reminiscence because of the positive effects it has on mental health. According to research, reminiscence therapy is an effective nursing intervention to enhance self-esteem, reduce social isolation and depression, and provide comfort in the elderly population.

Following on from the face-to-face visits, the welcome visitor at home visitors maintain telephone contact with the older person for around six months. The visitors tell me that, by the time they swap from face-to-face visits to phoning for a chat, they feel that they have established a bond with the older person.

The welcome visitor at home scheme was funded via a charitable grant to provide the service to lonely and isolated people in Ceredigion, Pembrokeshire and Carmarthenshire. Their funding runs until September but they are now looking to offer the service to the whole of Wales. The funding from the Sobell Foundation provided for a project co-ordinator and a small team of visitors who have, so far, helped around 120 people.

I hope that the Cabinet Secretary will agree with me that the welcome visitor at home project is an excellent service that could save millions of pounds by reducing avoidable hospital admissions and dependency on the care sector. The communities in Ceredigion, Pembrokeshire and Carmarthenshire have greatly benefited from this project, and I hope that the Welsh Government can work with the group to ensure that older people across Wales benefit from this valuable service. Diolch yn fawr.

I want to also pay some tribute to Pembrokeshire Disabled Bowlers Club. They actually run a scheme for all disabled people, whatever your disability. I spent some time there, in Milford Haven leisure centre, with them last Monday. What was absolutely clear about it was that people who had previously been absolutely isolated were now coming together as a collective group. I want to pay tribute here to Stephen and his wife, Olwen Whitmore, who run that club and have done for four years to make sure that those people, whatever their disability, actually have an opportunity to group together—and these are the words of the people I spoke to—to feel human again, to feel part of society again, and it has improved their mental health, but also their physical health as well. And I just want to ask you, Cabinet Secretary, to recognise those volunteers, who sometimes are lonely or would be lonely, themselves, in helping to reduce loneliness, isolation and all that goes with that.

I’d like to pay tribute to the Member—Caroline, Assembly Member—for bringing this here today. The effects upon someone’s mental well-being as a result of loneliness and isolation can be devastating. The older people’s commissioner has identified isolation amongst older people as a key public health issue. Seventy-five thousand older people in Wales feel lonely, with almost half of those saying their television or a pet was their main, and sometimes often only companion. Yet it is not always older people. Loneliness and social isolation can affect anyone of any age, and it is essential that we don’t forget the impact that this can have on a person’s physical and mental well-being: despair, depression, introversion, confusion, even malnutrition and dehydration, as quite often motivation to carry on living is often impaired.

Today, I would like to call on the Minister in the Welsh Government to ensure that we do have some practical solutions. Day centres can break the monotony of living alone and allow for social engagement, but, quite often, people cannot access them, so I would like to see more support given for our community transport infrastructure. The funding is required for that so that people can actually access these facilities. We need a joined-up approach. I would like to pay tribute to Esther Rantzen, actually, who, four years ago, provided a telephone service that you can phone, and it’s called the Silver Line. Pensioners can chat, for advice or support, or to report abuse. It’s an 0800 number, it’s freely available, and I really think we as politicians should be encouraging our constituents to perhaps engage more. All I know is that working with Welsh Government, we as Assembly Members, but working with these individuals who really—. As, Caroline, you indicated earlier, there but for the grace of God go us and, maybe, in years to come, there will we go.

I also wish to thank Caroline Jones for giving me a minute in this debate. I’ve spoken on loneliness in this Chamber several times, and it’s an issue that really does concern me. I intend just to give two examples of loneliness: first the woman who visited me in surgery three times. I asked her after her third visit what she wanted me to do to help her. She replied, ‘I come and see you, because you and the checkout assistant at Somerfield are my only two friends—the only people I speak to.’ The second is someone who visited me in another surgery and used to work in the media. Her husband had died and she had moved to a new estate, and she was the only person at home all day—good for taking in deliveries, but it meant she saw no-one all day. Remember, we can all end up being lonely.

Thank you very much. And I call on the Minister for Social Services and Public Health, Rebecca Evans, to reply to the debate.

Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer, and thank you very much to Caroline Jones for tabling this debate today and to all of the speakers for giving us the opportunity to explore how we can tackle the issue of loneliness and isolation in our Welsh communities, and I wholeheartedly agree that this is an issue that can only be properly addressed if we do work in partnership.

Loneliness and isolation can have a significant impact on both physical and mental health and well-being, and that’s why ‘Taking Wales Forward’ sets out a specific commitment to develop a cross-Government strategy to deal with loneliness and isolation. We recognise the need to work together across Government and we also recognise the need to work with the public and our external partners. This is an approach that we’ve already used successfully in a number of areas, including the work we have taken forward through the Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act 2014. The approach is about what Welsh Government can do, what statutory bodies and the third sector and independent sector can do, but also, importantly, it’s about what people and what local communities can do.

As highlighted by Jane Hutt in the previous debate that we had on this subject recently, our communities have had a long tradition of being places where people do their best to help each other. However, as society changes and families become more dispersed, more people are experiencing loneliness and isolation, and I think that the examples given by Mike Hedges really brought that home to us this evening.

We’re already taking action to tackle loneliness and isolation in Wales through a range of programmes and initiatives. Whilst this is primarily focused on older people, we do recognise that loneliness and isolation isn’t just an issue facing older people, and I’m grateful to Janet Finch-Saunders for reminding us of that fact as well. In terms of some of the work that’s been put in place, it includes a three-year programme of volunteer-led community networks, referred to as Compassionate Communities, and we also know about the importance of befriending. We’ve provided a range of funding to support this agenda, and this includes support for the Ageing Well in Wales programme, which has a specific work stream looking at loneliness and isolation. We provide also funding to a number of third sector organisations to tackle loneliness and isolation in our communities. For example, Diverse Cymru are undertaking a campaign with support from other organisations to help combat social isolation in BME and LGBT communities. Sight Cymru are working on a project to deliver bilingual expert patient-led support programmes, designed to combat the social isolation that can often come from losing your sight. Gofal’s Journeys programme aims to enhance and expand the current model of peer support groups who provide people with mental health problems the opportunity to share experiences, build self-esteem and confidence and reduce social isolation. And we’ve also funded Mind Cymru’s My Generation to improve the resilience and well-being of older people at risk of developing mental ill-health as a result of isolation.

I recently attended the launch of Ffrind i Mi—Friend of Mine—in Newport. That scheme aims to recruit as many volunteers from local communities as possible to provide support to others, and in doing so it aims to match volunteers to people with similar interests and backgrounds, such as veterans supporting veterans, for example. And I do believe that real friendships will develop through this model, which will benefit both the individual and the volunteer. This is a really good example of what people can do locally, and it fits in well with our model of developing compassionate communities. I was very interested to hear about the Welcome Visitor home project—that’s not one that I was familiar with before—in west Wales and the Pembrokeshire Disabled Bowlers Club too. Thanks to Janet Finch-Saunders again for highlighting the importance service that the Silver Line can offer.

I think that this debate does provide us with a really good opportunity to recognise and thank all of the volunteers who are willing to spare some of their time to support other people, including Joyce Watson’s constituent, Stephen. Whilst there are many examples of other similar schemes, we know that there is more to do and we don’t underestimate the seriousness of loneliness and isolation, and the impact on people’s mental health and well-being. Some of those figures that Caroline Jones spoke of very starkly at the start of this debate in terms of demonstrating the impact on health, I think, were really quite something as well.

Since the previous debate on loneliness and isolation that took place last month, the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee has published information on the inquiry that they will be undertaking. They will consider: the evidence of the causes and the scale of the problem; the impact on older people and whether it disproportionately affects certain groups, such as people with dementia; the impact on public services, particularly the impact on health and social care; and evidence of what works and what interventions can really help, and current policy solutions and their cost-effectiveness. So, I’m really looking forward to the outcome of this inquiry, and we will ensure that it’s considered as part of the way in which we develop our strategy across Government to address loneliness and isolation.

So, to conclude, I’d like to reassure Members that we are committed as a Government to doing all we can to address the issue of loneliness and isolation. Whilst this is a particular issue for older people, and while we will continue to focus on this group, we’ll also take the opportunity to ensure that other groups of people who experience loneliness and isolation are also supported. We all have a role to play and we will need to work in partnership if we’re to provide support to friends, family members, neighbours and colleagues who may be experiencing loneliness or isolation.

Thank you very much. That brings today’s proceedings to a close.

The meeting ended at 19:04.