Evidence of social value in the Lindsay Leg Club® network: an evaluation

The end of the 2010s saw an increased interest in unconventional approaches to delivering health and care services to people in communities through the demedicalisation of care facilities, building sustained, trusting, compassionate relationships and empowering people to avoid a ‘sick patient’ role while taking control of their social health (Collins, 2019). Greater calls for these new ways of delivering care have been made, especially in relation to caring for older people living with chronic conditions, such as non-healing and hard-to-heal wounds (Dainty et al, 2018).

As an innovative third-sector organisation, the Lindsay Leg Club^® network is now recognised as a sustainable way forward for the provision of wound care (Greener, 2019) and as taking a public health approach to tackling loneliness among older people, which has been aggravated by enforced social isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic (Day et al, 2020). However, there is a need for stronger evidence on the effectiveness of interventions aimed at reducing loneliness for older adults (Nesom, 2019).