Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent assessment she has made of the effectiveness of social prescribing at reducing levels of loneliness and social isolation.

The Department recognises the value of social prescribing in tackling loneliness. Since 2018, the Government and its partners have invested over £80 million in tackling loneliness.

The Department for Culture, Media and Sport published a report on 4 September 2023, Exploring interventions to tackle loneliness, summarising what interventions work to tackle loneliness and a report exploring the knowledge of professionals working to evaluate loneliness interventions. In this report, it was concluded that more evaluations are needed to determine the effect social prescribing has on loneliness.