Service to Reduce Loneliness in Worcestershire

Worcestershire County Council is commissioning a new public health service jointly funded by Worcestershire CCG for the next three years as part of a new overarching strategy to reduce loneliness for adults living in Worcestershire. The Council has included reducing loneliness as a contributory factor to Health and Wellbeing Board priorities since 2015.

This included delivery of a specific service to reduce loneliness using a process of matching volunteers to chronically lonely individuals by developing a personalised approach to improve their outcomes. There is existing evidence of the effectiveness of this current service provision for people aged over 50 years who are lonely, in addition to contributing cost savings to primary and secondary care.

The intention going forward is to commission a lead Provider to expand the reach of the current model to target all adults aged over 18 living in Worcestershire reaching the threshold for an intervention and requesting support to reduce loneliness. It is acknowledged that the new service needs to work as part of a wider Integrated Wellbeing Offer with social prescribing, lifestyles services and professionals in neighbourhood teams and primary care networks to ensure effective referral routes and signposting to the wider system of health and social care.

In addition, the new service will operate in a rapidly changing health and care system locally, so will need to be flexible in adapting to these opportunities in delivering efficiencies and improvements. Additional information: Is a Recurrent Procurement Type? : No