Loneliness

(asked on 12th December 2017) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps his Department is taking to reduce levels of chronic loneliness in England.


Answered by
Jackie Doyle-Price Portrait
Jackie Doyle-Price
This question was answered on 18th December 2017

Loneliness is complex and its causes are multi-layered. It may have a number of contributory factors that are both physical and emotional.

A number of the Department’s programmes either directly or indirectly address loneliness in helping people to feel part of the community as well as providing one-to-one support.

For example, social prescribing can tackle loneliness and social isolation through providing a way of linking patients with non-medical sources of support within the community. NHS England is encouraging general practitioners to develop social prescribing as one of the 10 high impact actions in the General Practice Forward View, published in April 2016. In August 2017 the Department launched the Health and Wellbeing Fund 2017-18, a grant fund for voluntary and community sector organisations for social prescribing projects. The application window closed on 21 November and successful schemes will be announced in due course.

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