Solving Social Isolation During Lockdown - As seen on The Studio (Channel 10)
With lockdowns across Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane there are countless people who are feeling lonely. This is especially the case for people living with a disability and the elderly.
Who are Like Family?
Like Family is a social enterprise tackling social isolation and loneliness. They use their online platform to connect people in need with trusted and vetted Social Carers who build long lasting relationships to boost confidence, improve indepndence and have fun!
Like Family is a registered NDIS provider.
What services does Like Family provide through lockdown?
Face to face services continue as usual as we are an essential service. In order to help our community stay connected and engaged through lockdown we also offer virtual services and have started running small group virtual events. Our services include:
- One to one social care and non-medical services - both face to face (as these are essential services) and online/phone bookings
- Minimal/non-contact shopping and errands
- Small group virtual events: - Dance class, meditation class, art & craft class, games night and exercise class
The Story from Studio 10!
Sarah Harris: Lockdown has meant that people living with disabilities and the elderly, might be dealing with their symptoms worsening, or even a loss of control in their lives.
Tristan MacManus: One Aussie company is on a mission to reduce the isolation of lockdowns. To tell us more is co founder of like family, Mat along with Valentina and Laura. This is a super terrific idea, and Mat it came about from an experience your family had. Tell us how did it all start?
Mat: I'm an only child and at the age of 26 I became the primary care for both my parents after my dad was battling with lung cancer and my mum suffered from a severe brain virus called encephalitis, which left her with severe mental disability. My biggest problem at the time (while I was working full time) was finding someone who would take them out of the house to do fun activities. It was an extremely stressful moment in our lives, until one of our friends who was a school teacher offered to help. She was actually struggling to find work at the time, but she was really passionate about wanting to help my parents. She didn't have any qualifications in disability support but we didn't need her to do work that you needed to be qualifed for, we just wanted her to hang out with my parents. They had a blast and we saw my parents, wellbeing and mental health increase dramatically. They would go out to the beach together, play musical instruments and just do fun things. We then realised that we're not the only ones with this problem there are actually over 4 million Australians that are socially isolated because of their mental health, disability or age.
So we created Like family as NDIS provider to match vetted and reliable people with people who want want help accessing the community and doing activities that will help them achieve their goals towards independence. We've got a mobile app and a website that helps connect and match people based on how well they get along with each other.
Sarah Harris: This is such a brilliant idea and I'm sure it's obvious it's clear, I mean there have been studies on it that loneliness has been exacerbated by lockdowns and by the pandemic, Val, tell us about your role as a Social Carer.
Val: As a Social carer I get to do lots of awesome things. I mostly provide care and companionship for people who might be elderly or living with disabilities, and this ranges from having dinner with my 97 year old Member to going out, watching movies with people like Laura and having really good time just spending time doing everyday activities with everyday wonderful people.
Tristan Macmanus: Oh great! So tell us a little bit about your relationship, the kind of things that you do, and what impact you think it has.
Val: Well Laura and I love seeing movies don't we?
Laura: Yeah, like Cruella
Val: Cruella was one of our favourites. We've also done things like putt putt golf together with Laura and some of her friends, and we've also been really lucky to see what musical?
Laura: Frozen!
Val: Yeah, we loved Frozen and we went into the city stayed in the city, just the two of us as well as Laura's brother John and his Social Carer so we've had lots of fun doing those kinds of things and building a really meaningful connection.
Sarah Harris: What beautiful friendship you two have. Mat, what are some of the other activities that some users of this service can actually do?
Mat: Yeah, it's really touching to see relationships like this and our goal is to ultimately build long lasting relationships so that people can continue doing activities that will help them increase their and maintain their independence. For example if we have someone with social anxiety who wants to go to a big event like Comicon, we're going to do multiple small steps and activities together, in order to achieve that big goal. Obviously now with lockdowns, that's a lot more challenging so we've actually created virtual one-on-one and group activities where people can stay connected through our classes - cooking classes ,exercise, or even just a games night for people to play games with like minded individuals. And we encourage people to stay engaged in the community because social isolation is so closely linked to mental health symptoms.
Sarah Harris: LikeFamily.com.au is the place to go if you want to sign up. Thank you so much, all of you for joining us this morning. Good to see those smiles. Bye guys.
Tristan Macmanus: We need more kindness don't we!? that's a great service!