We’ve had an exciting few months of research and collaboration, starting with taking part in an international workshop in the Netherlands exploring when loneliness becomes harmful. This week-long event helped us reflect on how we evaluate our impact and will influence future policy work supporting older people experiencing loneliness. Alongside our partners, including the Campaign to End Loneliness, we are making plans to expand our public engagement activities and strengthen our commitment to improving the outcomes for isolated and lonely older people. Meanwhile, our Enhancing Environments for Older Adults Social Connectedness study with Oxford University is underway, focusing on how physical environments affect community connection and loneliness, with findings due to be presented at the Healthy City Design Congress this October. 

Our first ever co-produced research project, which is being designed by older people, volunteers and staff together, is also in motion. After four engaging meetings with our Research Group, we have finalised our research topic and will begin developing the methodology later this month. This is a landmark project for Re-engage with older participants actively shaping the project from start to finish. We are also celebrating our Research 100 (R100) programme, welcoming four new students in the summer, bringing our total research student placements to seven. Our R100 students support us with research, data analysis and cross-team activities, having already completed over 143 hours of work and a series of literature reviews, soon to be published in our Research Hub. 

Our recent GP access and loneliness survey drew over 900 responses from readers of Time Together, our magazine for people who use our services – our most successful survey to date. This work will be picked up by our recently formed Policy and Influencing team and will form the basis of our first national campaign. More on this in the coming months. 

Finally, we are setting strong foundations for the charity's plans to grow. This includes researching the need for and feasibility of new services, looking at how we can use technology to improve the data we gather and how we use it, and overhauling the way we monitor the impact we have on our volunteers and older people. By involving our advisory groups throughout, we hope that we can introduce services that will make a real difference to reducing loneliness. 

If you are interested in learning more about our Policy, Research and Consultancy work, please check out our Research Hub.