Everybody recognises that volunteer and community support and social networks are crucial to wellbeing, and that for many older people these get harder to maintain. We offer a range of support from advice to welfare rights to matched volunteers to enable older people to remain socially-included, active and well. But there is no organised way for health workers to refer clients to us and we need to build strong links with primary care in the next few months to ensure the new health plans work.

We are already part of the new Integrated Care Pilots and can see how our services can be integrated with health - and so do the GPs we work with. But our current services are funded mainly by grants and cannot grow or develop to 'fit' the needs. So we will over the next year develop pathfinder services based on what is needed at each practice, establish costs and benefits (for clients as well as GPs!) and develop the business case for health and prevention funding to provide sustainability.