Local communities are being encouraged to engage with their elderly members following revelations that one in five elderly people can go more than a week without social contact.

As part of Isolation Week, ten volunteers have been confined to their homes for seven days in order to raise awareness of elderly isolation.

The volunteers will experience no human contact and will have to cope with special equipment, in order to simulate the lives of the millions of elderly people who live in isolation.

The equipment includes special glasses which impair vision, headphones which play white noise and popcorn in their socks to simulate arthritis.

According to isolationweek.com, each of the volunteers will tweet the awkward happenings of their day and record daily video blogs.

Social worker Pam Stopforth, who is one of the volunteers, claimed that those in social care jobs have a big part to play in reducing the amount of elderly people suffering from isolation.

Speaking to Community Care, she said: "If we can optimise our social workers and volunteers we can do more. Social workers need to take it back to the grass roots and talk to people though now it's about form-filling and assessment.

"What's needed is more joined up work with the third sector organisations, which can make a difference."