What is Social Prescribing?
Social prescribing is a key component of Universal Personalised Care. It is an approach that connects people to activities, groups, and services in their community to meet the practical, social and emotional needs that affect their health and wellbeing.
In social prescribing, local agencies such as local charities, social care and health services refer people to a social prescribing link worker. Social prescribing link workers give people time, focusing on ‘what matters to me?’ to coproduce a simple personalised care and support plan, and support people to take control of their health and wellbeing.
Social prescribing link workers also support existing community groups to be accessible and sustainable, and help people to start new groups, working collaboratively with all local partners.
The Goal of Social Prescribing
The goal of social prescribing is to empower individuals to take back control of their wellbeing and health. Services focus on what matters to the people. The service refers people to community organisations and services near to where they live. This way they can access activities that they can benefit from.
Social prescribing sets out to improve emotional, social and physical wellbeing via holistic means, often offered by local voluntary services. Examples are arts, gardening or running groups, befriending and cooking.
Social prescribing initiatives are tailored to provide support for individuals with a broad spectrum of social, emotional, or practical needs, with a strong focus on enhancing mental health and physical well-being. This approach caters to individuals with mild or chronic mental health concerns, those with complex needs, socially isolated individuals, and individuals managing multiple long-term health conditions who frequently engage with primary or secondary healthcare services.
Does Social Prescribing Work?
With social prescribing, individuals receive personalized support from dedicated Social Prescribing Link Workers. These professionals offer tailored solutions that extend beyond conventional healthcare services, addressing a wide array of social, emotional, and practical needs.
The evidence speaks for itself. Through social prescribing, individuals experience significant improvements in various aspects of their lives. By fostering social connections and combatting loneliness, mental health and overall well-being are notably enhanced. Quantitative measures, such as blood pressure, weight, and cholesterol, consistently show positive trends, indicating better physical health outcomes. Moreover, individuals become more engaged in understanding the intricate relationship between their health and lifestyle choices.
Qualitatively, social prescribing brings about meaningful improvements in self-esteem, confidence, and social interactions. From enhanced daily activities to improved prospects in employment and home life, its impact is profound and far-reaching.
Over the past decade, numerous studies have underscored the effectiveness of social prescribing, providing compelling evidence of its ability to enhance lives and communities alike.
How We're Helping
Our software, SocialRx Connect is being used by Social Prescribing teams UK Wide to refer individuals as well as organise and analyse their social prescribing efforts.
End-to-end social prescribing solution
We believe in doing things right. With that in mind we’ve created a full end-to-end solution for the social prescribing system. This solution helps Link Workers manage the entire social prescribing pathway.
We’re proud to say that our social prescribing IT system was co-designed with Bexley Voluntary Service Council and CCG. With their input we created a software platform that understands the differing requirements from both commissioners and providers of social prescribing.
SocialRx Connect
Our software is tailored to a range different users across the Social Prescribing and health care sector. This way a great number of people and organisations can benefit from and access our system. Think of for instance Clinical Directors, Commissioning teams, Voluntary Community and Social Enterprise (VCSE) organisations and link workers.
The great thing is that all these different users can have their own dashboards. In other words, you can view, edit and see what data you require with no added distractions.
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