Published on: 02,Sep 2025
Diagnosis Connect: the comfort, expertise and connection charities provide
Charlotte Nicholls, Head of Influencing, The Richmond Group
Recently, my friend and I hiked 60km along the Jurassic Coast for charity. While we’d anticipated the blisters, we hadn’t realised just how much of our (very long!) day would be spent chatting to fellow hikers walking for different causes.
What became clear was the deeply individual connections people have to charities, and the profound grief, grit and gratitude that underpins them. Over the 90,000+ steps, we heard many phrases like:
“[X] supported my nan really well”
“I recently lost my friend to cancer, and [y] were there for her”
“Information from [z] was so valuable for us when my partner was diagnosed”
We both work for brilliant health charities, so it wasn’t a surprise, but the love for – and trust in – charities was palpable. Voluntary organisations of all shapes and sizes have a well-earned reputation for giving people comfort, guidance and compassion when life throws huge challenges their way.
These conversations added a very human perspective to the advocacy The Richmond Group of Charities has been doing for months. Throughout the development of the 10 Year Health Plan, we’ve been talking to government about the untapped potential to connect people to the wealth of valuable voluntary sector support that exists, especially when they need it most.
Diagnosis Connect announcement
Last month, therefore, we were delighted that the Prime Minister announced Diagnosis Connect, a pioneering and digitally enabled partnership between charities and government. It aims to embed automatic referrals into expert charity support, at the time people are diagnosed with a health condition. It’s something we – and many others – have long been calling for, based on a concept that three of our charities (Diabetes UK, Mind and Asthma + Lung UK) developed.
We know that diagnosis can be a time of worry and questions. Yet charities have a wealth of high-quality personalised information (in a world of unreliable AI overviews), helplines, access to specialists, online forums and peer support that can transform that experience and give a seamless onward journey of support. For health professionals, referring to charities can give confidence that their patient’s clinical care is being complemented by trusted information and conversations that improve their ability to cope and manage their health.
While many details of Diagnosis Connect are still to be worked up, there’s a clear intention to build patient connections into charities in a systematic way, allowing people to benefit from the full range of support that exists across the sector, and improving people’s outcomes and experience in turn. The initiative will support a quarter of a million people in its first two years and be scaled up in future to reach hundreds of thousands more people diagnosed with health conditions.
Charities as core in the health system
Speaking about Diagnosis Connect, Wes Streeting said “there are some things that if the state tried to do it, it wouldn’t be as good as the voluntary sector doing it”. It’s a signal that the government recognises charities are part of the answer to ‘how’ the system collectively delivers the vision of preventative, community-based, digitally enabled care. There are some things the sector’s just really well-placed to do, and providing holistic support is one of them.
I admire the way, for example, MS Society talks about supporting people to have ‘mastery’ over their condition – what a powerful thing to aspire to offer. This offer of supported self-management by charities should be given even more prominence at a time when more of us are living for longer with (often multiple) health conditions that require ongoing management.
Changing relationship with the VCSE
Too often, the voluntary sector can be seen as a ‘nice to have’, an amateur add-on to the NHS, rather than a core part of a health ecosystem that keeps people as well as possible by managing health and ill health in an ongoing way. Charities clearly already have a strong place in people’s hearts, beloved in much the same way as the NHS. At a really challenging time for both the voluntary sector and the government, with growing demands on services and restricted finances, it’s vital the two work together to unlock charities’ capability to provide the support they’re expert at providing.
I hope the recent launch of the Civil Society Covenant – announced the same day as Diagnosis Connect – is a turning point in the way government, public services and civil society work together to tackle the biggest challenges we face, in much the way mission-driven government was initially set out. Keir Starmer said to charities in his speech “this will transform the way we work together.” We certainly hope so.
References:
Diagnosis Connect press release: Patients with long-term conditions to receive help from charities – GOV.UK
Prime Minister’s announcement: Keir Starmer delivers speech at Civil Society Summit – watch live (19:45-20:55)
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