Our immediate neightbours are Chinese

from Taiwan.
H....speaks almost no English even after around eight years here. For this I blame her husband R.... I offered to help H.... with English lessons. He declined. 
If the Senior Cat and I have ever tried to speak to her over the fence then R... will join in and take over the conversation. It has left her isolated apart from her children and some of the acquaintances R... made before he arrived here. Her grandchildren do not speak Chinese. They are growing up here but H... rarely sees them.  It seems that this is the way R... wants things.
Now she is even more isolated than before.
Yesterday I saw her coming back with her shopping. She looked as if she had been crying. I can't go to her and ask, "What's wrong?" and I can't go to her and hug her. I did hug her once. It was about a year or so after she arrived. Her husband's car was damaged in the car park of the hospital and someone phoned. Her limited understanding of English caused her to believe that R... had been injured. She was frantic. I took the phone from her and took the message and then told her carefully that R... was not hurt. I gave her a hug and she held on tight. It was what she needed right then.
A hug might not have helped yesterday. I can of course imagine all sorts of things that might be wrong. I did call out and ask if she needed help. All I got was a look of despair and misery and a shake of the head. 
I wonder how many other people are in this position? We tend to think of everyone as being able to communicate...even me whose working life involves helping others do just that. It isn't true of course. Right now there are people who don't have access to computers, who can't afford the sort of phone plan that allows them unlimited talk time and much more. There are many people here who speak almost no English. They are isolated at the best of times and it might be that they had one outing each week - perhaps to church or mosque or temple or a language class - and that has stopped.
If those of us who have multiple ways of communicating find it hard then how much harder are they finding it?
I am going to send my Federal MP a suggestion this morning - a temporary measure to reduce isolation. If anything comes of it then people will hear about it.