Paul Farmer, charity leader
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Who is Paul Farmer and what led him to a career in charity work?
Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne, and this is the Desert Island Discs podcast from BBC Radio 4. Every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury, that they'd want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island. For rights reasons, the music's shorter than on the original broadcast, but you can find a version with longer music tracks on BBC Sounds. Listeners will also get access to episodes 28 days earlier than everyone else. I hope you enjoy listening.
My castaway this week is the charity leader Paul Farmer. He spent his working life campaigning, fundraising, and changing the national conversation around some of the most challenging issues in our society. He was a graduate with a history degree from Oxford when he found himself working for a heritage centre. He fell in love with the charity sector, moving to the Samaritans. His experiences taking calls from those struggling with their mental health. made him a campaigner. Determined to do more than listen, he eventually moved to Mind, where he became CEO. As well as leading successful fundraising efforts that changed the scope of what the charity could do, he effectively lobbied the government, leading a fifteen year campaign that helped to change legislation and the national conversation about mental health.
His latest challenge is what used to be called old age, though we should probably use later life. He's taken the helm at age UK and is determined to do the same with the conversation about aging as he did for mental health, calling out ageism, campaigning for older people, and encouraging all of us to prepare and plan for a happier, healthier later life. He says Day after day I see the belief and hope that the that many charities bring to the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in this country. The volunteers and the voluntary sector staff are the belief makers. Paul Farmer, welcome to Desert Island Discs.
Thank you very much, Lauren. It's great to be here.
So I think we should start with belief making, Paul. Tell me about that lovely phrase.
I'm fortunate enough to work in a sector that brings hope and optimism to so many people's lives. It's creating that sense of belief that we can do things differently, we can make things better. And for me it's changing big issues, it's changing causes that you know, is the thing that I've really enjoyed doing so far.
And the latest big issue of course is aging. So you want to change the way that we talk about it, the way that we think about it and experience it. So you said that, you know, in many ways we're in denial about uh the realities of aging. What are we not seeing?
We've got this extraordinary situation now where people live for twenty or thirty years, even longer sometimes after retirement. I'm not sure that we pay it spend enough time thinking about how we want to spend that later life for our own well being. There was a tradition in this country that people just move to the seaside and increasingly we're hearing that people were saying, Well what I'm not sure I want to do that because I don't know anybody there. I don't have have friends. Actually the things I really want to do are go to art galleries or spend time with my friends or with my family. So we're not planning in that way. It's a little bit like the work we did in mental health. There's a sort of stigma about it, so people don't talk about it as much.
Yes, and I know that loneliness is a really big focus for you. Almost a million older people report that they are often lonely. That's a really sad statistic, isn't it?
It's a terrible indictment of how many older people feel and how our society thinks about the loneliness and isolation of older people. In the world where I've come from, in mental health, it feels to me when I'm hearing older people talking about loneliness and isolation, it's the equivalent of younger people talking about depression and anxiety.
Well and and it's we hear about it from younger people too, don't we, that sense of isolation.
How did Paul’s childhood and family background shape his values?
So so what do we do about that, about those older people and the feeling disconnected, feeling isolated?
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
Who is Paul Farmer and what led him to a career in charity work?
0:00–4:06
2
How did Paul’s childhood and family background shape his values?
4:06–7:40
3
What experiences at the Samaritans and Rethink sparked his campaigning for mental health?
7:40–12:33
4
How did Paul transform Mind’s 15‑year “Time to Change” campaign and fight stigma?
12:33–15:56
5
Why does Paul see ageing as the next big societal challenge and how is Age UK tackling it?
15:56–23:28
6
How did the loss of his wife Claire affect Paul personally and professionally?
23:28–45:48
7
What strategies does Paul use to stay resilient while leading a large charity?
45:48–50:27