A national campaign to celebrate the benefits of intergenerational activities is due to take place next week.
But as Britons adopt social distancing and enter self-isolation, care providers are having to cancel social gatherings that bring the young and old together.
So how can they mark the occasion without meeting in person?
St Monica Trust, the Bristol-based charity that launched the campaign, is encouraging organisations to pool their collective experience into sharing ideas for tackling social isolation.
It says companies should come up with creative ways in which people can have meaningful interactions with other generations during the pandemic, such as through Skype, emails, phone calls and Facebook.
The charity is also encouraging providers to post about recent intergenerational projects and their benefits on social media, using the hashtag #IntergenerationalWeek.
Send your ideas for supporting relationships across age groups during the coronavirus to ben.dunn@stmonicatrust.org.uk.
St Monica Trust took part in the ground-breaking Channel 4 show, Old People’s Home for 4 Year Olds in 2017.
The show famously brought together
eleven care home residents and ten children from local preschools and
showed the transformative power that being around children had for the older
people.
The Trust has since grown its reputation for work which brings different age
groups together for mutual benefit, rolling out intergenerational projects
across its retirement communities and contributing to multiple pieces of
research.
National Intergenerational Week will take place from 23-29 March.
