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September 2023

Tackling loneliness interventions

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Tackling loneliness interventions
In partnership with

The quick read

Together, the What Works Centre for Wellbeing and the Campaign to End Loneliness have conducted:

  1. A rapid systematic review of what interventions work to tackle loneliness;
  2. Stakeholder engagement to map current delivery and evaluation practices in the field.

Overall, we found:

  • Strong quantitative evidence for multiple effective approaches to alleviating loneliness in the short-term.
  • Qualitative evidence on the potential enabling factors and causal pathways in loneliness alleviation, including community-focused connections, building trusting relationships, and the role of group settings.
  • Intervention effectiveness is influenced by a blend of ‘key elements’.
  • Evidence of holistic systems of support for tackling loneliness being developed.
  • Evidence of sectors and settings where interventions target loneliness less explicitly and practice is less established.
  • Whilst there is some similarity, the global evaluation literature does not necessarily reflect current UK tackling loneliness practice.

This document brings together the two strands of work, to summarise key insights, implications for research, and recommendations on how to improve evaluation practice.

Commissioned by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport’s Tackling Loneliness Team, the research updates our understanding since we looked in 2018 and can be used to shape further research and policymaking, as well as guide funding decisions and practitioner activity.

Close The quick read

Background

The research

Methodology and target outcomes

What did we find?

Research implications

Recommendations for practice

Citation

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You may also wish to read the blog article on this document.

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