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Make a referral

Thank you for your interest in Manchester Cares. Before making a referral, please ensure the person you are referring:

  • Is aged 65 and over;
  • Lives in the city of Manchester;
  • Does not have a diagnosis of dementia;
  • Does not have severe unmanaged mental health conditions.
  • Is able to independently communicate with our staff team either over the phone or by email. 

Unfortunately, our current model means we are unable to meet the needs of people living with dementia or unmanaged mental health conditions. If you are looking to support someone living with these conditions, please call us on 0161 207 0800 and we may be able to signpost you to some of our fantastic local community partners. 

Please note, we are not able to provide a transport service. If you are looking for transport to join our programmes, please contact Ring and Ride here or call Ring and Ride on 0161 244 1000 and select option 2.

Before making a referral for our one-to-one friendship programme Love Your Neighbour, please read our referral guidance here.

To make a referral please complete our referral form. If you want to stay in the loop about the clubs, events and activities we offer, sign up to our mailing list for monthly updates.

What can I refer an older neighbour for?

Our Social Clubs are free group activities that take place several times a week in person (face-to-face) and online, over Zoom. They offer a chance for older (over 65) and younger neighbours to share time, laughter and new experiences that help everyone to feel a part of our rapidly changing city, rather than left behind by it. Our Social Clubs take place on weekdays, evenings and weekends and include Pub Quiz, Desert Island Discs music club, Poetry Club, Documentary Club, Theatre Trips, themed clubs and many more.

We send out free monthly #AllTogether Activity Packs (in the post or over email), which include an activity for every week of the month to do at home. Each suggestion is different and could range from writing a letter to an inanimate object, to deciding what you’d do if you were Prime Minister for the day, to cutting out words from a newspaper to turn into an abstract poem. 

Love Your Neighbour is a friendship matching programme. It introduces younger and older neighbours living across Manchester, matching them together to spend time one-to-one together, either over the phone, in-person or a mix of both.

On the Love Your Neighbour programme, friends generally catch up together once a week, to enjoy company and conversation. We match people based on proximity and try our hardest to bring people together based on mutual interests to create genuine, long-lasting friendships.

With Love Your Neighbour, our younger neighbours cannot help with practical tasks such as cooking, cleaning or attending doctor's appointments.

Although we’re unable to directly offer practical support ourselves, we are able to signpost older neighbours to our local and national partners to support them to access the right help, which may be access to food packages, prescription collections, housing advice and repair, health services, local activities and more.

Referral guidelines

We have clear guidelines on who our volunteers can and can't support. Our volunteers are not clinical staff – they are Mancunians who'd like to help people feel more connected. That's why:

  • We don’t accept referrals for people living with a diagnosis of dementia, a psychotic disorder and/or any other unmanaged mental or physical health condition. We consider a physical or mental health condition to be managed when the person living with the condition has adequate support in place and/or is on medication which helps them cope with their condition. Medication is not a necessity for their condition to be deemed as managed. However, we can offer suggestions for alternative organisations and signposting so please get in touch if you're looking for support;
  • We DO take referrals from statutory and healthcare services – such as housing departments, GP social prescriptions, and mental and social care providers. However, we may need to make our own assessments on whether our programmes are appropriate and will be beneficial for new neighbours
  • Manchester Cares is an anti-discrimination organisation and we want everyone to feel safe and supported within our programmes. Any form of discrimination will not be tolerated and this will be discussed during the assessment.