Churches across Britain are being asked to ‘adopt’ care homes to provide comfort and succour to lonely dementia sufferers. When former nurse Tina English had a vision of churches across Britain adopting care homes to alleviate a crisis, she did a simple sum. ‘There are about 50,000 churches in the UK and 17,500 care homes,’ she says. ‘I thought, if one in three churches started a care-home-friend project there would be a lot less isolation and loneliness.’ Tina, director of Care Home Friends, now has the chance to make it happen after receiving funding from Cinnamon Network, a Christian charity, to start projects across the country. A video that she posted on YouTube has been an effective recruiting tool. She has built up a network of fifty volunteers visiting seventeen care homes in the borough of Richmond upon Thames over the past two years. ‘God has given me a heart for older people,’ she says.