Independent Age is at the beginning of a new strategy journey, one where we focus on our mission of ensuring that as we grow older, we all have the opportunity to live well with dignity, choice and purpose.

Our volunteers will play a fundamental role in ensuring that we achieve that mission, but we want to be sure that we are involving you in the right activities, in the right ways and at the right time. As a result, we have made the decision to put a pause on recruiting any more volunteers at this time and review all our current volunteering opportunities, taking time to listen to what older people and current volunteers are telling us about what it is they want and need.

We are so grateful for your interest and sorry that we cannot support you to volunteer at this time. Please do return to our website in the coming months to find out about our exciting new volunteering opportunities.

We have made the difficult decision to ask all our volunteers to pause visits to older people until further notice. As part of this, we are also encouraging our volunteers to make calls to those they support to keep in contact and provide reassurance where they can. Some things to include in those calls are:

• checking in that they are eating well, have enough food in, have a plan to get more delivered if necessary and are staying hydrated
• that they are taking and have access to any medication which they might need
• encourage them to keep in touch with people over the phone or digitally if they can
• recommend that they listen to a chatty radio station and if they are feeling lonely, to put some extra pictures around of people they care about
• if you feel comfortable to, please feel free to share your number with the person you support so you can stay in touch

We would also be grateful if you could share the advice provided by the NHS. The NHS has advised that we should all:

• stay at home
• only leave home to shop for basic essentials, to exercise (once a day), for medical needs or to work if you cannot work from home
• wash our hands with soap and water often – do this for at least 20 seconds
• always wash our hands when we get home or into work
• use hand sanitiser gel if soap and water are not available
• cover our mouth and nose with a tissue or sleeve (not our hands) when we cough or sneeze
• put used tissues in the bin straight away and wash our hands afterwards
• try to avoid close contact with people who are unwell

For anyone experiencing symptoms:

• England: call 111
• Scotland: call your GP surgery or call 111 if your surgery is not open
• Wales: call 111
• Northern Ireland: call 111

Further information about coronavirus can be found at the following website: https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/coronavirus-covid-19/common-questions/