Building Resilience

Find out how the Building Resilience programme at Age UK provides information, advice and support to people experiencing life events and supports them to achieve what matters to them.

What is Building Resilience?

Our Building Resilience programme is delivered through holistic, person-centred advices sessions with older people. The programme specifically targets people who are experiencing a significant life event or coping with a life change, by providing one-on-one sessions aimed at supporting the person to resolve their situation and helping them to achieve what it is that matters to them.

That event or change could be one of a wide variety of things such as a bereavement, a relationship breakdown, having a fall, being diagnosed with a health condition, finding it harder to look after yourself, changes in your housing needs or financial situation, to name but a few.

Our skilled advisers will also take the time to find out what else is going on in the older person’s life and see what else they want to achieve. That could be anything from something relatively small or easy – getting a little help with their garden, for example – to something bigger like increasing their income or feeling less lonely. Our advisers will go on to offer information, advice, support and referrals to help the older person achieve those things.

Building Resilience started delivery in January 2021 and is set to continue until the end of May 2025.

Where is the programme running?

Building Resilience started with delivery in 8 local Age UKs, but is now being delivered by 7:

• Age UK Camden
• Age UK Coventry & Warwickshire
• Age UK Devon
• Age UK Nottingham & Nottinghamshire
• Age UK Sheffield
• Age UK South Lakeland
• Age UK Wiltshire

If you or your loved one live in one of these areas and need some advice and support, please get in touch with your local Age UK. We'll work with you to get the support you need through tough times and help you identify the changes you want to make so you can enjoy your later life more.

What has the programme achieved so far?

As we head into the summer of 2024, we can see that we've already changed so much for more than 7,000 older people supported through the programme. Here are just a few examples:

• We’ve identified over £18.5m in unclaimed benefits – essential during the Cost of Living crisis – enabling older people to heat their home more, get out and about, and get help in or repairs for their home.
• 82.7% of the people we’ve followed up with feel more confident about managing their daily life.
• 85.8% feel less worried about their situation.
• 98.8% feel that our advice has been helpful in dealing with the problems they were facing.

More information

If you're interested in finding out more, please contact your local participating Age UK.