Where's Your Head At? The Importance of Expressing Emotions at Every Age

By Jolie Goodman, Programmes Manager for Empowerment and Later Life, Mental Health Foundation

A longer version of this article can be found on the Elder.org website 

The Standing Together Project aims to improve the emotional health and community connections of older people living in supported housing. Over the Project’s two-and-a-half-year run, it has facilitated groups in 19 different housing schemes. 

The Project was set up in 2015 as a partnership between the Mental Health Foundation and Housing & Care 21, a UK housing organisation providing social housing and support to people in later life, including those living with dementia.

Since then, we have run weekly self-help groups for periods of six months, in retirement and extra care housing (where the people are actually tenants in their own flats, but then buy in different quantities of care as needed) for those experiencing memory loss, mental health issues, learning disabilities and significant loneliness. Notting Hill Housing became an additional partner in the second year of the project.

My background is in working in adult mental health, but I was attracted to the job of managing the Standing Together Project because I felt it was a real opportunity to build connections between people - and also to find out about people’s identity, life stories and passions.

Obviously, the later life housing sector has undergone a lot of change and has born the brunt of cuts in local authority funding for care services. Loneliness and isolation are increasing across the generations, but particularly in later life.

In later life, there are many reasons for isolation. The front door can be a huge barrier for people; people might not get out of their flats that easily, and sometimes it is because of their frailty, but often it’s a psychological barrier. Another key reason is if someone has been with a partner for 60 years and they have died - then the whole balance of their life is changed.

Someone who has lost a spouse has to adapt to living a very different life, and that can make them feel lonely, so it was very positive to be able to do something that really addressed that loneliness.

We have secured funding for a Welsh version of the project. This Autumn we will be launching a toolkit so that the housing sector can buy in our expertise in co-producing this type of  initiative, to address loneliness and improve wellbeing, in later life.