ABSTRACT
Current debates in many countries about the sustainability of public commitments include
discussion of the adequacy and affordability of collective health and social care responses to the
rapidly growing needs of ageing communities. A recurrent theme in England is whether
communities can play greater roles in preventing the emergence of social care needs and/or in
helping to meet them. A number of approaches have been suggested, employing a range of
concepts and terms, including community development, community capacity-building and
creating social capital. We investigated whether initiatives of this kind generate cost-savings to the
public purse and more broadly to society. We used a cost-benefit approach and decisionmodelling techniques to demonstrate potential costs and economic consequences in a context
where evidence is limited and there is little opportunity to collect primary data. We found that
there could be sizable savings to the public purse when investing in community capital-building
initiatives at relatively low cost. We discuss the limitations of our analysis and recommend
collection of better outcome data.