Following the success of the Christmas Connections initiative last year Hendon Football Club are delighted to launch Community Connections in partnership with Ashford Place to help tackle loneliness in our local community.

Community connections is an online social campaign aiming to build awareness of the impact of loneliness and to help improve the health and wellbeing of individuals.

Our core Objectives

1) To raise awareness of the negative impact of people experiencing loneliness and social exclusion.
2) To support individuals, local communities and businesses to find ways of supporting people who experience loneliness.
3) Identify and support people to reduce their sense of loneliness and social exclusion.

Epidemic of Loneliness in UK

Loneliness has become an epidemic in United Kingdom affecting people of all ages, gender and backgrounds. Whilst everyone might feel lonely at some point in their life, persistent feelings of loneliness is damaging to health and wellbeing. Loneliness is linked with increased risk of obesity, coronary heart disease, depression, dementia and even premature death.

According to figures published by the Office for National Statistics, 2.4 million adult British residents of all ages suffer from chronic loneliness. The health impact of loneliness has been found to be comparable to smoking 15 cigarettes a day, equal to a 26 per cent increase in the likelihood of mortality (Holt-Lunstad, 2015).

This number when combined with medical research highlighting the dangers of loneliness on the health and wellbeing of individuals make loneliness one of the major health issues that need to be tackled nationally, locally and individually.

Our Response

Ashford Place in partnership with Hendon Football Club created the Christmas Connections campaign in December 2018, an online platform to connect people who wanted to help with others who experience loneliness.

The campaign raised awareness of loneliness and encouraged individuals, communities and businesses to draw on a variety of resources and pledge vital support for the cause-ranging from the simple act of sending someone a Christmas card, to organising group Christmas dinners to making a phone call to someone they knew who was alone over the Christmas period. The campaign was a success in raising awareness and was able to support over 300 people to feel happier, more connected and more socially included.

Based on the success of the Christmas Connections campaign, Ashford Place and Hendon Football Club decided to further develop the campaign by running it throughout the year to reach greater number of individuals of all ages over 18 - who need support to feel less isolated and lonely. We are calling this latest phase of the campaign Community Connections

How you can you make a difference?

We urge everyone to work together to try to end the epidemic of loneliness and create a connected society for everyone. Loneliness needs to become everyone's business. It's down to us!

You can help make a difference today by thinking of a friend, neighbour or relative or someone else and make a pledge.