Good to talk

MARJORIE MORDUE isn’t the sort of person who usually feels comfortable going up to people she doesn’t know and talking to them. But she does just that to help those lying in a hospital bed without anyone to chat to.

The 62-year-old, from Chester-le-Street, coordinates a team of hospital visitors who provide company for patients and keep their spirits up during visiting hours. They talk about shared interests and their experiences of the area, where she’s lived for many years.

She got into the CSV (Community Service Volunteers) Retired and Senior Volunteer Programme (RSVP) in a roundabout way. She’s never had a full-time job, working part-time after having her children. Then she was ill.

“I had cancer in 2001 and had one year’s treatment. After that my daughter was very keen for me to get back into everything. She’s a nurse and said you must do something, so she took me into the volunteer office to ask about things.”

Marjorie began working in a school, where she was initially helping with reading lessons, but ended up playing piano for assembly. Office work at the local volunteer centre followed and that led to voluntary work at the hospital.

There, she became involved with Friends Indeed which had been set up to chat to patients who don’t have anyone at visiting time. “We found a lot of people didn’t have visitors and felt that it would be a good idea to visit them ourselves. It’s a bit embarrassing when other people have visitors and you don’t,” she explains.

That led to joining the RSVP programme.

She’d never thought about being a hospital visitor before. “Because I’m not a very outgoing sort of person I couldn’t have ever seen myself going up to people and just starting a conversation.

It’s a difficult thing to do in hospital when they’re not well. That’s why I went to schools originally, because I wanted to be with children,” she says.

“When I started doing the office work, they asked if I’d like to go to the hospital to see what they did. At first we sorted flowers out as well as talking to the patients.”

The Chester-le-Street hospital has two wards with 39 beds for geriatric inpatient treatment.

“Most come from The University Hospital of North Durham. They’ve maybe had a stroke and moved on, hopefully to go home or into a home,” Marjorie says.

There’s a team of eight or nine visitors, joined recently by sixth formers wanting to do voluntary work.

“Quite a few people don’t get visitors, so we go in the afternoon when families are usually working and can’t visit. They go more at nighttime.

Some of our ladies go outside visiting times.”

She’s learnt to recognise if she’s welcome at the bedside. “When you start talking you get the feeling how much they want to talk. Some can talk for a full hour. We get all the history and everything, and others can’t be bothered,”

says Marjorie, whose husband David is retired and does gardening for the elderly.

“We can go in every day if we want. At the moment, we only have people going in a couple of days a week. We could do with more volunteers.”

John Dobson is also involved with a health scheme – he coordinates drivers to transport patients to GP surgeries. “We take people to doctors’ appointments, people who’d have difficulty otherwise. Now, with fewer local buses, a lot of people struggle to get to surgeries,” he says.

“Some say they would not go unless there was a car scheme. It’s a problem for a lot of people.”

The scheme, which is advertised in surgeries, has been running for seven years. Some people, he says, have been using the service from the day it started.

“All the drivers get satisfaction out of it. It’s something to do and a chance to put something back in the community.”

Marjorie and John are among nearly 1,000 RSVP members involved in the Durham area programme, part of the national CSV scheme aimed at encouraging anyone aged 50-plus to participate in volunteering.

Other activities include a prescription delivery scheme for people who can’t make it to the chemist and some 200 volunteers in schools helping pupils with reading, teaching knitting and helping with PC skills. There are also Knit and Natter groups and home knitting schemes, telephone befriending and a teleconferencing book club for housebound people.

ASHLEIGH GIBSON, Durham development officer, says there are no restrictions on age. “We have one person who’s 80 in the volunteer drivers’ scheme. As long as they are fit and healthy and willing to volunteer, age is no boundary,” she says.

“There’s a woman of 98 who knits for goods we send overseas. She can do that at home.

Even if people are quite frail, they can volunteer and feel they’re doing something valuable.

“You have some really go-ahead retired people who reach 60 but are as fit as a 40-year-old and want to do something active. It’s amazing, we can always find someone suitable for the projects. There’s a wealth of experience out there we are desperate to tap into.”

“The school volunteers tend to go to their local junior school and build up a relationship with them. A lot of them have grandchildren who live away and want contact with young children,” she says.

If the RSVP scheme can’t help, they can supply volunteers to other suitable voluntary organisations in the area.

“It’s an ageing population now. People’s attitude to ageing has changed and volunteering is quite high on the agenda for community- based projects.”

■ Anyone interested in volunteering with RSVP in the North-East should contact CSV on 0191-389-1155. Email rsvpne@hotmail.

com or visit csv.org.uk