This British Red Cross volunteer-based scheme offers short-term (4-12 week) practical and emotional support at home for older people recently discharged from hospital. Using data from the British Red Cross internal evaluation (n=52 individuals; Joy et al., 2013), savings from needing less help with daily activities and improvements in subjective well-being averaged £884 per person. This covered savings up until 6 months following the intervention and included reduced use of paid homecare workers (£167), unpaid care valued at minimum wage (£411) and general help (£75), as well as reduced healthcare costs for treatment associated with falls (£153), malnutrition (£74) and depressive symptoms (£4). The internal British Red Cross evaluation could not identify a control group and no adequate external comparison group could be identified for our economic evaluation. However, we estimated that the intervention costs an average £169 per person, including volunteer time valued at minimum wage. The scheme would need to be responsible for 19 per cent of the estimated savings to be considered cost-saving. Qualitative research, conducted as part of the British Red Cross evaluation, indicated that there were also wider benefits, including enabling safe discharge, supporting carers, enabling patient advocacy and quality of life benefits that could not be included in the economic analysis. More detailed results are available.