King's College London

Rising numbers of older people in England and Wales live alone and the UK Government’s plans are for more preventive work to take place in the community. Community services play a vital role in supporting the health and wellbeing of older people living alone, but their preventive contribution is not well understood, and they are poorly integrated with wider health and social care systems.

In their new briefing, published today by the Health and Social Care Workforce Research Unit, a team of researchers led by Dr Kritika Samsi report why early detection by community service matters; how community services act as early detectors; stories from service staff and volunteers; and health and social care stakeholder feedback on services’ preventive work.

In the Preventive Role of social care for Older People (PROP) study, we asked people working and volunteering in homecare agencies, befriending services, lunch clubs for minority groups and men’s sheds how they identify and follow up health and wellbeing concerns about older people living alone. We discussed with various health and social care stakeholder groups how well this work is valued and integrated within health and social care.

Findings highlighted how services helped older people living alone stay healthier for longer by spotting health and wellbeing concerns early and following up on these. Despite this work being valued by people working in health and social care, unstable funding for community services hinders formal links being made. To strengthen connections, community services could benefit from 1) recognition that informal community support is integral, not peripheral, to preventive person-centred care, 2) structured opportunities for regular contact with NHS services and 3) less precarious or longer-term funding arrangements.

Alongside the briefing, we have published 11 vignettes, based on our interviews, which provide fuller details of the work done by these community services.

Further information about the PROP study and the vignettes can be found on the PROP study web page.

This publication

Knight, F, Orellana, K, Semkina, A, Leverton, M and Samsi, K (2026) Men’s Sheds, Befriending Services, Lunch Clubs And Homecare Agencies As Early Detectors. How do voluntary and community services identify and follow up health and wellbeing concerns in older people living alone? London: NIHR Policy Research Unit in Health and Social Care Workforce, The Policy Institute, King's College London. https://doi.org/10.18742/pub01-246

Project page

Preventive Role of social care for Older People: triggers, judgement calls and processes (the PROP study) | King's College London

Funding

This study was jointly supported by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Applied Research Collaboration (ARC) Kent, Surrey and Sussex and ARC South London. The views expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the NIHR or the Department of Health and Social Care.