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Joe Dickinson greets a pensioner on a Jersey doorstep. He mobilised the island’s postal workers to call on vulnerable people — an idea that won The Sunday Times Change Makers (Katie Patterson)
To mark Impact Journalism Day, The Sunday Times set up the Change Makers competition. I spoke to the winner, Joe Dickinson, who explained how his idea helps other people
Imagine you’re old, lonely, vulnerable. Most of your friends have died. Your children live far away; the phone rarely rings. What if you fell and broke a hip? How long might you lie, waiting for help? And what if that help never came?
These are dilemmas that the Lancastrian Joe Dickinson, a former IT consultant now living in Jersey, was thinking about a few years ago. He was working for Jersey Post, the island’s equivalent of the Royal Mail.
Dickinson had suffered a stroke a few years earlier. “That was my watershed,” he says: it made him think more carefully about vulnerable people. “I realised the postal service was already on the street. Only it had the infrastructure to visit every home in Jersey, or in Britain, every day.”
So he developed a scheme — genius in its simplicity — for postal workers to call and check on elderly or vulnerable people. That scheme has made him the winner of this year’s Change Makers campaign, the search by The Sunday Times and its partner, the Media Trust, for the best ideas having a social impact around Britain. Dickinson, 64, was nominated by a friend and had no idea he was even being considered when he received the call telling him he had won.
“Many people don’t want to be visited by social workers or carers,” he says. “But everyone talks to their postman. He can ring the bell and make sure the older person doesn’t need any help — medical or social.”
The Call and Check scheme now operates in four areas of Jersey, serving more than 100 elderly and vulnerable people. It will be expanded across the island early next year. Dickinson believes it could eventually save governments millions.
“On Jersey, the proportion of over-65s is set to double in a few decades,” he says. “These people need to be kept at home for as long as possible — hospitals and care homes are expensive.”
Call and Check, he says, will defer entry into hospital and prevent missed appointments with the GP.
One of the Change Makers judges, Camila Batmanghelidjh of the charity Kids Company, said of the idea: “Very clever, good use of ongoing services. A gem.”
As well as receiving £1,000 to continue developing his scheme, support and mentoring from The Sunday Times and the Media Trust and coverage in 40 newspapers around the world, Dickinson will now be profiled on television.
By harnessing existing networks, and thanks to his innate compassion, Joe Dickinson is a worthy winner.
