FOR MANY old people, modern day Britain can be a very confusing and often uncaring place.

With worries about pensions, health, and finance plaguing pensioners, they often find themselves unable to understand the paperwork and bureaucracy involved with modern life.

To combat this, Age Concern Hertfordshire hs set up an advocacy service in Sawbridgeworth to give elderly people much-needed advice and help.

Advocacy worker for Age Concern Jane Rushton said: "Pensioners often have trouble coping with council procedures. It can be quite intimidating dealing with jargon and official reasons.

"We are now running a new Advocacy Service for old people in East Hertfordshire, which is able to give those who feel that they are in trouble options that they didn't know they had."

The new advocacy centre is now running from the Hailey Day Centre, in Sawbridgeworth.

According to Jane Rushton, the aim of the centre is to provide elderly people in the county with a source of information and help about benefits and services that many do not know that they are entitled to.

Pensioners are then able to consider options that they would not otherwise know how to use, or even that they were there in the first place.

"We introduce people to new services, and tell them what their rights are. When we help out, it can be about any issue that comes up," Jane said.

"Sometimes we get asked to find out why some services have been delayed or cancelled, why things like bowling clubs have stopped meeting on previously regular nights, and so on."

Age Concern Hertfordshire has 70 paid staff, the bulk of whom work part-time hours, and these are helped by 500 volunteers.

It offers a wide range of services for the elderly in the information, which includes day care centres, an information service, help with funeral plans, a carer's support service and insurance.

In East Herts, Age Concern also runs a volunteer visitor scheme, in which volunteers visit old people who have no family, or who live in such isolated and out-of-the-way places that they are virtually friendless.

Many of their volunteers have been visiting these often very lonely people that they have become almost a part of the family.

The service is also able to give advice on house insurance, an issue which has been growing in importance over the past few years.

Recent changes in legislation have meant that people entering old age homes can only pay for their time there by selling the one asset they have -- their own home.

According to Joyce Giles, Information and Development officer for Age Concern, this is often very hard on pensioners.

She said: "There are many people in their 70s and 80s whose big dream in life was to have their own home, which they could pass on to their children. Now their children have their own homes, and theirs are just assets.

"Many pensioners have NHS insurance, and they were brought up to think that the health service took care of you from the cradle to the grave. The rules have changed, and many feel aggrieved about this."

Age Concern are now looking for additional volunteers willing to give some of their time to help them expand in Hertfordshire. Applicants will have to pass an interview with Age Concern, before going on to training.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000.Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.