Guidance 74
What Funders Are Actually Buying: Service Delivery or Community Membership
A funding decision that looks like one choice is often two: pay for a service with defined outputs, or pay for a community with none. Confusing them is what breaks programmes at renewal.
Safeguarding When the Referral Is to a Coffee Morning, Not a Clinic
Informal social prescribing sends isolated people into unsupervised community settings with volunteers, not clinicians. Here is what a safeguarding structure for that actually needs to cover.
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.
Are You Evaluating a Service or a Community? Pick One
Programmes that deliver a service and programmes that build a community succeed on different metrics. Using the wrong one is why funders see decline where members see health.
Scaling a Workplace Connection Programme Without Killing It
The features that made a small workplace connection pilot work are usually the first things cut when it goes company-wide. A practical checklist for what to protect.
Employee Connection Programmes: What Happens in the First Four Weeks
New hires are most open to forming workplace ties in their first month and least likely to be offered anything structured. A look at how sequencing, not just programme design, determines whether workplace connection efforts hold.
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.
Where Attendance Actually Collapses, and What to Design Around It
Group-based connection programmes don't lose people gradually. They lose them at a specific point in the run. A look at how trial designs, social prescribing, and consumer platforms have each built around that point.
Choosing Outcome Measures a Commissioner Will Accept
A framework for selecting loneliness and connection outcomes that hold up to commissioner scrutiny, built around which measures the evidence base actually supports.
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.
How to Recruit the People Who Won't Sign Up
A sequenced approach to reaching socially isolated people through programme design, when flyers, open calls, and self-referral only ever find the already-connected.
Isolated Is Not the Same as Lonely — Your Programme Design Needs to Know Which
A new study splits isolated older adults into those who become lonely and those who don't. That distinction should change how you screen, refer, and staff social prescribing caseloads.
Scaling Social Prescribing Without Losing What Made It Work
A practice note on the specific mechanism that breaks when social prescribing schemes grow, and what to protect deliberately rather than let erode.
How to Decide When to Stop Running a Connection Programme
A sequenced procedure for deciding whether to close, redesign, or keep funding a social connection programme, built around the evidence you actually have rather than the evidence you wish you had.
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.
Social Prescribing Builds Referrals, Not Necessarily Communities
Most social prescribing pathways end at the referral. A framework for distinguishing a service that delivers contact from a community that sustains it, and why the difference determines what your outcomes data will show.
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.
Give People a Job, Not Just a Seat: Roles Inside Social Prescribing Groups
Most social prescribing groups collapse once novelty wears off because attendance is passive. Assigning roles inside the group is a cheap, testable fix — here's how to structure it.
The Denominator Problem: What Attrition Numbers Actually Mislead
Most attrition figures in connection programme reports answer the wrong question. A guide to choosing the right denominator and reporting dropout in a way a funder can actually use.
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.
How Informal Connection Programmes Handle Safeguarding Without Killing the Informality
Volunteer-led social groups sit awkwardly between clinical services and pure informality. A look at how organisations in this space have set safeguarding thresholds, trained non-professional facilitators, and decided what a volunteer is not responsible for.
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.
What to Measure When Your Connection Programme Runs on Volunteers
If your befriending, mentoring, or visiting programme depends on volunteers, your evaluation plan has to track the volunteer pipeline as closely as the outcomes — because attrition there is usually what breaks the results.
The Fidelity Metrics That Catch a Programme Drifting as It Scales
A new study on third-place closures shows why a connection programme that worked in one place can fail in another. Here's what to measure before and during rollout to catch the drift early.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Matching the Intervention to the Need: How Programmes Have Approached Targeting
Befriending, group activities, and skills training address different problems. A case-approach look at how organisations have matched intervention type to isolation versus loneliness versus deficient social skills.
How to Tell If You're Measuring a Service or a Community
A step-by-step way to check whether your programme's evaluation is only capturing service delivery, and what to measure instead if the goal is durable community.
When to Close a Group Down
A decision framework for programme managers and link workers on ending a social connection group well, rather than letting it run past the point it does any good.
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.
Room Layout, Timing, and Transport: The Logistics Decisions That Decide Attendance
Venue budget lines that never make the funding narrative — parking, room shape, start time, and the walk from the bus stop — are often what determines whether a connection programme fills a room.
Measure Your Volunteers the Way You Measure Your Participants
A step-by-step method for tracking volunteer recruitment, training and retention in a connection programme, including which numbers to collect from the first cohort and which claims the evidence will not support.
The Week Four Problem: Why Drop-In Social Groups Empty Out
Most open drop-in social groups launch strong and collapse within a month. A sequenced procedure for building a group that still has people in it by month three.
Before You Port a Programme to a New Population, Check This
A practice note on adapting a connection programme built for one group to another — what actually needs to change, and the failure mode when it doesn't.
Safeguarding in Social Prescribing: A Procedure, Not an Afterthought
A step-by-step approach to building safeguarding into informal social prescribing activities, without turning warm community spaces into clinical checkpoints.
Why Your Connection Programme Only Reaches the Already-Connected
Workplace social connection programmes tend to recruit the people who need them least. Here is how to change who signs up, not just how many.
Attendance Falls at Session Two, Not Week Four
The most common attrition point in a new connection group is earlier than programme teams expect. Here's what typically happens between the first and second session, and how to redesign around it.
Digital or In-Person: How to Cost and Choose a Group Format
A funding decision, not a preference. How to work out whether a digital group, an in-person group, or a hybrid model is the better use of a fixed budget, and what the evidence actually supports.
What to Fix and What to Flex When You Scale a Connection Programme
A group that works at one site is about to be commissioned across thirty. Guidance on writing a fidelity specification before the contract does it for you, and the funding mechanic that quietly destroys dose.
Measuring the Handoff: Where Referral Pathways Actually Fail
A guide to evaluating social prescribing and community referral pathways by tracking the handoff points, not just the endpoint outcomes.
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.
Writing a Connection Programme Bid Commissioners Will Actually Fund
Commissioners do not fund loneliness reduction. They fund service use, cost avoidance, and outcomes that fit their frameworks. A guide to translating the evidence accordingly.
The Drop-In Group Referral: Why It Fails at Week Four
A post-mortem on the most common social prescribing referral -- a one-time signpost to an open drop-in group -- and why attendance collapses within a month.
What You Lose When You Scale a Connection Programme
Scaling a social connection programme past its founding cohort usually strips out the element that made it work. A practice note on what to measure before you expand, and what to protect deliberately.
Running a Group Online or in a Room: A Decision Framework
A structured way to decide whether a connection-focused group should meet digitally or in person, and what changes about facilitation, retention, and evaluation once you've chosen.
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.
A Referral Gets Someone There Once. It Does Not Make Them Stay
Social prescribing link workers can refer someone to a group. Whether that group becomes a source of ongoing connection or a single attended session depends on design choices most referral pathways never touch.
Recruiting, Training, and Keeping Volunteers for Workplace Connection Programmes
Most workplace peer-support and social-connection schemes run on volunteer labour, not budget. Here is what to build before you recruit, and why most of these programmes die when one person leaves.
The WHO Commission Just Made Loneliness a Global Problem. Social Prescribing Was Built for a Local One
The WHO's new Commission on Social Connection treats loneliness as a worldwide priority. Most of the evidence behind social prescribing comes from older, UK-based, healthcare-connected populations. Here is what has to change before it travels.
The Week Four Problem: Why Attendance Collapses and What to Do About It
Most connection programmes lose attendance at a predictable point, not gradually. A practice note on identifying the collapse point and designing around it.
Funding Reach, Not Just Delivery: A Framework for Recruiting the People Who Won't Sign Up
Most social connection programmes are funded to deliver sessions, not to find the people who never apply. A framework for budgeting, staffing, and measuring recruitment as its own line of work.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
Digital or In-Person: Choosing the Format for a Social Prescribing Group
Social prescribing services default to whichever group format is easiest to schedule. A look at what the published evidence says about digital versus in-person delivery, and how to decide.
Measuring Whether Group Roles Actually Reduce Isolation
A guide to evaluating structure inside group programmes — welcome roles, rotating tasks, and named responsibilities — rather than just counting attendance.
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.
What to Train Frontline Staff to Say About Loneliness
A script for the moment someone discloses loneliness to a link worker, receptionist, or line manager — and the specific phrases that undermine a well-designed programme.
Scaling a Connection Programme Without Losing What Made It Work
A sequenced approach to scaling a social connection programme, for funders and programme managers deciding whether to expand a pilot that worked.
When the Ask Outruns the Evidence
A framework for handling the moment a funder or commissioner asks you to promise an outcome the social connection literature cannot actually support.
How To Write A Loneliness Programme Bid A Commissioner Will Fund
Commissioners buy risk reduction, service demand, and defensible measurement. A guide to translating a social connection programme into the terms a funding panel actually scores against, including what to do when your evidence is thin.
The Venue Line Item Funders Cut First — And Shouldn't
Grant budgets treat venue and logistics as overhead to minimise. For attendance, they are the intervention. A practice note on the line items that quietly decide who shows up.