Guidance 42
Building a Referral Pathway That Survives Contact With Demand
A sequenced approach to setting up health-to-community referral partnerships for social connection, built around the point most pilots miss: the community organisation's capacity.
Should You Refer Anyone to a Consumer Connection App?
Buffet, Timeleft, 222, Pie, Meetup, Eventbrite, Luma and Partiful get recommended to isolated clients as if they were one thing. They are four different things. A decision framework for link workers, and the four cases where referring is defensible.
The Venue Decisions That Determine Who Actually Shows Up
Room layout, parking, signage, and start time quietly decide attendance for community and social prescribing programmes. A checklist for the logistics that get treated as afterthoughts.
Why Matched Befriending Schemes Plateau Around Week Six
Most social prescribing referrals for loneliness end in a one-to-one befriending match. The evidence on why these schemes underperform structured alternatives is now specific enough to change how you design one.
Reach Is Not a Warm-Up Act for Outcomes
Programme managers under pressure to show outcomes often skip the reach data that would tell them whether those outcomes mean anything. Both numbers answer different questions, and neither substitutes for the other.
The Recruitment Problem Social Media Data Just Made Harder to Ignore
A new nationally representative study on the closeness of online contacts is a reminder that recruitment channels which rely on people finding you tend to miss the people most worth reaching.
How to Choose Outcome Measures a Commissioner Will Actually Accept
A sequenced approach to picking loneliness and connection outcome measures that survive a funding review — not just the ones easiest to collect.
The First Four Weeks: A Sequencing Guide for New Connection Programmes
Most community connection programmes lose people between week two and week four, not at launch. A week-by-week sequence for what to prioritise, and why befriending-only models keep underperforming structured activity.
Why Loneliness Predictors Should Decide Who You Recruit as a Volunteer
A new cross-national study on who is lonely and why has direct implications for befriending and social prescribing schemes: most volunteer pipelines recruit the wrong people for the job.
Where Social Prescribing Groups Actually Lose People
Retention in community groups and social prescribing programmes doesn't fail at the first session. It fails when the original reason for attending runs out and nothing has replaced it. A look at how three models handle that point differently.
How Venue and Logistics Decisions Quietly Kill Attendance
A sequenced checklist for choosing venue, timing, and format for community programmes, covering the operational decisions that determine whether people show up twice.
Knowing When to Close a Group, Not Just How to Start One
A practical checklist for deciding whether a running social connection programme should be closed, merged, or restructured — and the failure mode that keeps dying groups open.
Before You Borrow a Loneliness Programme, Check Who It Was Built For
Programmes built for isolated older adults get repurposed for lonely young adults, remote workers, and new parents all the time. The mechanism that made the original work often doesn't survive the transfer.
What HINTS-6 Changes About Training Frontline Staff on Loneliness
A new federal estimate splits loneliness into severity states. That distinction should change the script link workers, receptionists, and community staff use — not just the statistic they cite.
Should Your Group Meet Online, In Person, or Both
A practice note for programme managers deciding format for a peer or interest group: what digital delivery actually trades away, when it's the right call anyway, and how to avoid running a group that is neither.
The Venue Decision Nobody Budgets Time For
Where a group meets, how easy it is to reach, and whether the room stays the same each week shape attendance more than the programme content does. A practical look at the logistics that get treated as afterthoughts.
A Referral Is Not a Membership
Social prescribing schemes often refer people into activities that function as services with attendees, not communities with members. That distinction predicts whether the referral holds after week six.
The First Four Weeks: Sequencing a Connection Programme So It Survives Contact With Reality
A week-by-week sequence for launching a social connection programme, built around the point where most attendance collapses and what to do before you get there.
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.
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.
The Third Session Is Where Attendance Collapses
Attendance in group-based connection programmes does not drop off gradually. It drops off at a specific point, and different organisational models handle that point differently.
Should You Run This Group Online Or In Person?
A decision procedure for choosing the delivery mode of a connection group, what the evidence does and does not support about digital delivery, and why attendance registers hide the people who never get spoken to.
Recruiting the People Who Won't Sign Up
Standard recruitment for community programmes reaches people already inclined to join. Here is what changes if your target is the people least likely to self-select in.
Designing a Loneliness Evaluation You Can Actually Run
A six-step framework for evaluating a community connection programme with one part-time coordinator and no research budget — including what pre-post data can and cannot support when you put it in front of a funder.
Recruiting and Keeping Volunteers for Connection Programmes
Most volunteer attrition in social connection programmes happens for predictable, fixable reasons. A practice note on recruitment, training scope, and the supervision structure that keeps people past month three.
Fund the Role, Not the Founder
A practical guide to structuring roles inside a funded peer group or social prescribing activity, so it survives the departure of whoever started it.
Who Holds the Relationship When a GP Refers to a Community Group
Social prescribing pathways fail when health services control referral volume but community organisations carry the delivery risk. A practical structure for the partnership, and the failure mode to name before it happens.
Five Structural Tests for Whether You Built a Service or a Community
A service delivers an activity to people who arrive as recipients. A community is a set of relationships among the people who arrive. Five tests to work out which one you have, and what each costs to run.
Designing the Handoff: A Framework for Referral Pathways Into Connection Services
Most social prescribing pathways fail at the handoff, not the intervention. A working framework for designing the moment a referral becomes an actual first contact.
What Social Prescribing Reports Leave Out When They Report Attrition
A systematic review found all nine included social prescribing studies reported positive impacts. That uniformity is a warning sign about how attrition gets handled, not evidence the approach works for everyone.
The First Four Weeks: Sequencing a New Connection Programme
A week-by-week sequence for launching a group-based connection programme, built around the point where most attrition happens and what to do before, during, and after it.
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.
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.
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.
Health and Community Cannot Just Refer to Each Other
A framework for building genuine partnership between health services and community organisations on social connection, rather than a one-way referral pipe that quietly breaks.
How to Turn a Service Into a Community
A weekly group that runs on schedule is not the same as a community. A sequenced procedure for building peer ties instead of just delivering sessions.
Designing Groups That Survive Week Four
Most connection programmes do not fail at recruitment. They fail between the third and fifth session, and the causes are structural rather than motivational.
How Much Safeguarding Does a Drop-In Actually Need
A practice note on calibrating safeguarding for informal social programmes -- warm spaces, walking groups, peer drop-ins -- without importing clinical-service structures that undermine the thing that makes them work.
Measuring the Health–Community Partnership, Not Just the Referral
A guide to evaluating social prescribing partnerships between health services and community organisations, with the metrics that actually distinguish a working pathway from a busy one.