The public presence

1 Help the Aged is a highly visible charity with strong local roots. This visibility provides plenty of opportunities for public relations and promotion. Our 300 shops on the nation’s high streets and the 1100 mini-buses we provided for groups all over Britain raise our profile at the local level where important fundraising activities take place. Indeed our Project Fundraising Advice programmes, where we work in partnership with other groups and charities, provide plenty of strong local stories and raise local awareness of Help the Aged.

2 The same is true of innovative campaigns that the Charity runs. For example, our joint project with the Rural Development Commission, ‘Growing Old in the Countryside’, focuses attention on a neglected area – the specific problems faced by elderly people in rural areas. Here is a classic case where we need to draw attention to the fact that the proportion of older people living in the countryside is actually greater than in urban areas, and refute the common perception that only city dwellers suffer from poverty and isolation. Five regional conferences followed by a national conference drew to a close six years joint research work with the Rural Development Commission and focused media attention on the realities of rural living.

3 Whether in town or country the Charity distributes free information and advice leaflets to older people and their carers, currently two million every year. The leaflets attract media coverage because of their value and accuracy. The leaflets attract media coverage because of their value and accuracy. We ensure that Help the Aged senior staff are always available for media interviews on these subjects and on important research papers which we publish on crucial topics such as long-term care and safety in transport. Media training is just as important for a charity as itis for directors of commercial companies – these days everyone has to know the value of a ‘soundbite’.

4 The number one enemy of charity public relations is undiluted worthiness. Help the Aged strongly believes in raising its public profile by emphasizing the fun in fundraising. That is why our SportAge activities are so successful, with hundreds of activities and events every year. Like any active public relations group, we also welcome the generous support we get from showbusiness personalities. The membership of our Stage for Age reads like a Who’s Who of the world of entertainment.

5 Sometimes an unexpected endorsement can have a big impact. For instance, who can calculate the value of Samantha Fox describing Help the Aged as ‘my favourite charity’ in an off the cuff remark during the National Lottery draw on BBC1?

Partnership – the sum is greater …

1 As a case history I want to examine in some detail an example of a particularly fruitful partnership between Help the Aged and the then newly privatized Eastern Electricity. Working together, the two public relations departments created an award winning campaign which was to be renewed and developed further two years later.

2 The seeds of the campaign had been sown some years previously. At its heart was the Charity’s awareness of elderly people’s fear of crime. Any successful campaign satisfies a need, or a perceived need. Help the Aged’s Community Alarm Campaign with its Home Safety successor, satisfied both. Apart from first hand knowledge gleaned from working with older people over decades, HtA drew on important sets of statistics.

3 The British Crime Survey found that a third of women over 60 and nearly one ten men over 60 felt ‘very unsafe’ on the streets. In fact, just 1.2 per cent of women over 60 and 0.6 per cent of men over 60 are actual victims of crime. Younger people are over three times more likely to be victims of street crime than the over 60s – even those who go out four or more evenings a week.

4 There is no simple explanation for this prevailing fear of crime among the older population. Blaming the media is not enough. Older people may fear crime more because of their relative isolation, or because of the greater difficulty in old age of simply ‘picking up the pieces’ again after an adverse event. Whatever the reasons, the perception remains among a significant proportion of our older population that they are likely to become the victims of crime. The majority, however, are not sufficiently motivated to take measures to increase their protection.

5 A recent MORI survey found a significant proportion of the older population were without basic home safety devices, 49 per cent without a mortice lock, 93 per cent without a spy hole, 46 per cent without a door chain and 63 per cent without window locks. Help the Aged believed that providing some of these devices and advising on their use would increase older people’s confidence. The balancing act would be to help them feel more secure and safe in their own homes without having to barricade themselves in so effectively that no one could reach them in an emergency.

6 Accidents and emergencies however, had provided the starting point earlier Help the Aged campaigns which had been mounted to counter actual rather than perceived need. Just over half (51 per cent) of pensioners over 75 suffer fatal accidents. Falls are the most frequent cause of the accidents. One in ten of those in the 65-74 age range group cannot go out of doors. This figure rises to one third for those over 85.

Date: 2015-12-18; view: 579