Practice
Guidance index
Everything the Institute has published for practitioners. 219documents, most recent first.
2023
Why the General Mixer Fails the People Who Need It Most
Gallup and Meta's new global connection data shows most people already feel connected. That should change how you design programmes meant to reach the minority who don't.
Which Outcome Measures Will Actually Survive a Commissioner's Review
A practical guide to choosing loneliness and isolation outcome measures that hold up when a commissioner asks what changed — and why satisfaction scores rarely do.
How to Split Roles Inside a Group So It Outlives the Grant
A sequenced approach to assigning distinct roles inside a funded peer or community group, so the group keeps running when the paid facilitator's hours end.
Matching the Programme to the Kind of Disconnection, Not the Word 'Loneliness'
Employers keep buying the same wellbeing perk for three different problems. A look at how workplace loneliness interventions can be matched to what is actually driving disconnection, rather than treated as one thing.
What Breaks When You Scale a Social Prescribing Programme
The evidence on social prescribing keeps pointing to one design feature that makes it work — and it is the first thing to erode when a pilot goes national. What training needs to protect.
Reporting Attrition Honestly in Social Prescribing Evaluations
Dropout data in connection programmes is usually buried, not analysed. A practical approach to counting, categorising, and reporting attrition so a funder can trust the outcome numbers that remain.
Building a Cost Case for a Connection Programme Without Overselling It
A step-by-step approach to costing the case for a social connection programme that survives scrutiny from a finance director, built around what the evidence can and cannot support.
Digital or In-Person Groups: What to Actually Require in an Evaluation
Before funding a digital or in-person connection programme, decide what evidence you will require to compare them — because the literature on modality itself is thinner than most bids imply.
What to Train Link Workers to Say About Loneliness
Social prescribing link workers are routinely asked to raise loneliness with patients. Most training tells them what to screen for. Almost none tells them what to say.
Before You Reuse a Loneliness Measure on a New Population, Check This
Adapting a loneliness or isolation instrument built for one population -- usually older adults -- to a different group is common practice. It is also where a lot of programme data quietly stops meaning anything.
Workplace Connection Programmes Recruit the People Who Least Need Them
Voluntary sign-up for workplace social programmes systematically misses the isolated employees they're meant to reach. Here's what to do about recruitment before you launch anything.
The Week Four Problem: Where Social Prescribing Referrals Actually Fall Away
Attendance in social prescribing groups does not decline evenly. It collapses at a specific point after the first visit — and most programmes are not tracking closely enough to see it happen.
What a Volunteer Programme Budget Should Actually Fund
Most connection-programme budgets over-fund recruitment and under-fund supervision, which is the wrong split. A practical guide to allocating a volunteer budget so people stay past the six-week mark.
Choosing Outcome Measures a Commissioner Will Actually Accept
A guide to picking loneliness and connection outcome measures that survive commissioner scrutiny, drawn from how social prescribing evaluations have approached the same problem.
When to Close a Peer Support Group, Not Just How to Start One
Most social prescribing guidance covers launch and referral. Almost none covers the decision to end a group. Here is what published evidence suggests that decision should rest on.
Reach and Outcome Are Different Numbers: A Framework for Measuring Both
A framework for social prescribing and connection programmes that separates who you reached from what changed for them, and explains why funders need both numbers to mean anything.
Evaluating Training on Loneliness and Connection Without an RCT Budget
A sequenced approach to evaluating loneliness or connection training that a small programme can actually run, without borrowing the trappings of a clinical trial it cannot afford.
What the Surgeon General's Advisory Changes for Workplace Referral Pathways
The 2 May advisory gives employers the numbers to justify acting on loneliness. It does not tell you what happens in the ten minutes after an employee discloses. A guide to designing the handoff between a manager, an EAP, and a community destination.
The Venue Decisions That Quietly Kill Attendance
A review of how community programmes have handled room choice, timing, and cost recovery, and why those logistical decisions do more to determine attendance than programme content does.
A Referral Is Not a Relationship
Social prescribing pathways often succeed at getting someone through the door once and fail to produce the ongoing belonging that changes health outcomes. Here is how to tell which one you have built, and what to check before you scale it.
When the Study Proves the Problem but Not the Fix
A new Japanese panel study confirms loneliness rose during the pandemic. That is not the same as evidence for any particular programme, and treating it that way is a common and costly mistake.
Funding Informal Social Programmes Without Signing Off on the Risk Blind
A funder's checklist for building safeguarding into grants for befriending, walking groups, and other informal social connection programmes, where the evidence base is strong on benefit and almost silent on risk.
The First Four Weeks of a New Connection Group: A Sequence
A week-by-week procedure for launching a group-based social connection programme, built around the point where most groups lose people: the session after the welcome.
Why Workplace Friendship Programmes Quietly Die
A framework for diagnosing why employer connection programmes stall after launch, built around the failure points programme managers keep hitting and how to design around them.