Practice
Guidance index
Everything the Institute has published for practitioners. 219documents, most recent first.
2025
Making the Case to Commissioners: What to Measure and Why
Commissioners fund outcomes, not activity. A guide to picking outcome measures for social connection programmes that survive a funding panel's questions, and being honest about what the evidence can and can't support.
What the WHO Report Changes for Health and Community Partnerships
The WHO Commission on Social Connection has given health systems a mandate to treat connection as a clinical concern. The bottleneck is not referral volume — it is whether community organisations can absorb it. Six decisions to make before you sign anything.
When to Stop Running a Connection Programme
A decision framework for funders and programme managers on closing, not just launching, social connection initiatives — with the evidence thresholds that should trigger a stop.
What to Measure Before You Scale a Connection Programme
Growth usually breaks the mechanism that made a small programme work. A practical set of checks for what to measure before, during, and after scaling.
What Cigna's 2025 Numbers Change About the Referral Handoff
Cigna's Loneliness in America 2025 shows 52% of workers lonely and rising among younger staff. The gap that matters is not awareness — it's what happens between an EAP referral and an actual social contact.
The First Four Weeks: Sequencing a Health System's Social Connection Response
A week-by-week sequence for health and care teams starting to screen for and act on social isolation and loneliness, built around where these programmes actually fail first.
Safeguarding in Informal Social Programmes: What Actually Needs a Policy
Befriending schemes, walking groups, and social prescribing activities carry real safeguarding risk despite their informal feel. This note sets out which risks need a written procedure and which need judgement.
Who Owns the Referral After It Leaves the Clinic
A practice note on the operational question that decides whether a health-community partnership works: who is accountable for what happens between the GP's referral and the person's first visit to a community group.
How to Evaluate a Social Connection Referral Pathway Without a Research Team
A practical evaluation design for social prescribing and connection referral programmes that a link worker or programme manager can actually run, using outcomes the data already supports.
Building the Cost Case for Social Prescribing Without Overselling It
Commissioners keep asking social prescribing services to prove they save the health system money. Here is what the published evidence actually supports, and where the honest cost case has to stop short of that claim.
Funding Programmes to Reach the People Who Never Apply
A self-referral pipeline will always recruit the people who already have the capacity to ask for help. A practical procedure for commissioning recruitment that reaches the rest.
Running a Peer Group Digitally vs. In Person: What Actually Changes
A practical comparison of digital and in-person delivery for workplace connection groups, with the design changes each mode forces and how to combine them without losing either.
Evaluating a Borrowed Model: What Changes When You Move It to a New Population
A checklist and evidence framework for programme managers adapting a connection intervention validated on one population — older adults, say — to a different group, such as new parents or remote workers.
Which Outcome Measures a Commissioner Will Actually Accept
A practical guide to choosing social prescribing outcome measures that survive commissioner scrutiny, including which tools have evidence behind them and which just look rigorous.
Count Who You Missed, Not Just Who Improved
Community connection programmes almost always report outcomes for the people who turned up and nothing about the people who did not. A practical method for building a reach denominator you can defend to a funder, and why outcome data alone will mislead you.
Fund the Roles, Not Just the Room
A practical test for funders and commissioners reviewing group-based social connection proposals: does the application specify who does what, or does it just describe a room and a schedule?
Building a Volunteer Programme That Outlasts Its Founders
A framework for recruiting, training, and retaining volunteers in connection-focused programmes, built around the point where most of them fail: month three.
What to Train Frontline Staff to Say When They Ask About Loneliness
A script-level guide to training link workers and clinicians to ask about social isolation and loneliness without triggering stigma, false reassurance, or the fix-it reflex.
How to Report Attrition Without Burying It
A practice note on reporting who drops out of a social connection programme, and why the honest version of that number strengthens a funding case rather than weakening it.
When a Funder Wants Outcomes the Evidence Cannot Promise
A sequenced approach for link workers and programme managers asked to commit to outcomes — reduced GP attendance, lower loneliness scores by a fixed date — that the social prescribing evidence base cannot actually support.
Fixing the Point Where Workplace Connection Programmes Lose People
Most peer groups and buddy schemes don't fail at launch. They fail at week four, when novelty runs out and nothing structural replaces it. Here's how to build past that point.
The Venue Decisions That Quietly Decide Who Shows Up
Room choice, timing, and how findable the door is predict attendance more than most programme content does. A guide to measuring which logistics decisions are costing you participants.
Are You Funding a Service or a Community
A funding decision that gets blurred constantly: money for a service that delivers connection to people, versus money for a community that people build together. They need different metrics, different timelines, and different exit plans.
Writing a Social Prescribing Business Case Commissioners Will Actually Fund
A sequenced procedure for pitching a social prescribing scheme to a commissioner: which outcomes to lead with, which evidence claims will survive scrutiny, and where most proposals lose the room.