Briefing: The Government’s Loneliness Strategy

Share on:

On 15 October 2018, the Government published it’s long awaited loneliness strategy:  ‘A connected society – a strategy for tackling loneliness – laying the foundations for change.’  You can find  CTA’s initial response to the strategy’s call for evidence in July here, and read the full loneliness strategy yourself here.

In the report, the Government set out its mission statement to tackle and raise awareness of loneliness as a public health challenge. One month on from the publication of the strategy, we look back at some of the main points set out and provide some greater detail on the Government’s key commitments, as well as the role of community transport within it.

The strategy is split into five key chapters, providing a background to loneliness, including its impacts and causes, and highlighting the commitments that the Government will be making in the arenas of health, infrastructure, education, the workplace, and research.

The CTA greatly welcome the Government’s new strategy and consider it an important first step to tackling a condition that affects people across communities, age groups and environments. In particular, we support the Government’s recognition of the vital work of the voluntary sector and the community transport sector; and their adoption of a single measure of loneliness.

The vital work of community transport providers has time and again been proven to greatly alleviate loneliness and isolation for hundreds of thousands of individuals across the UK. CTA hope that this impact can be better recognised in future reports and that the community transport sector can be actively included and integrated into future project work and decision making. CTA would welcome the opportunity to collaborate with key stakeholders to ensure this. For example, the strategy speaks of social prescribing, cultivating strong social connections to reduce mental health issues, and connecting people to employment and volunteering opportunities – work which community transport already carries out to the benefit of communities across the UK.

To provide a better breakdown of the strategy, we’ve put together a detailed briefing on the main talking points which you can read below:

Read our briefing here