Good health depends on more than just medicine. There are many factors – such as debt, loneliness, and poor housing – that significantly affect our health and wellbeing and can’t be treated by doctors or medicine alone. Social prescribing can help change such circumstances that make people unwell.
What is social prescribing?
Social prescribing is a term for giving people a non-medical ‘prescription’ to something that will improve their health.
It’s a process in which a healthcare practitioner (often one based in a GP surgery) connects patients with non-medical support, typically at a community or neighbourhood level. This kind of support could be arts-based, a social activity, a form of physical exercise, or information and advice.
Social prescribing in Big Local
Since its conception in 2012, the Big Local programme has been delivering a wide range of activities that fall under the umbrella of social prescribing. This support includes:
- Accepting referrals from social prescribing link workers to existing Big Local activities
- Providing office space to social prescribing services
- Setting up new groups and activities to meet local health needs, which have clear links to social prescribing
Here, Jenny Chigwende, chair and health lead of W12 Together Big Local, explains why community-led health initiatives are so important:
While social prescribing is often described as ‘community based,’ its focus on individual outcomes has previously overlooked the critical role that communities and community leadership play in identifying solutions.”
Matt Leach, CEO, Local Trust
Read on to explore our research on community-led social prescribing, building on learnings from the Big Local programme.
Community-led social prescribing: Lessons from Big Local and beyond
We worked with the National Academy for Social Prescribing and the Centre for Regional Economic and Social Research (Sheffield Hallam University) to explore the potential for greater community involvement in, and leadership of, social prescribing in England – drawing on the experiences of Big Local areas.
The report defines community leadership of social prescribing as being: ‘where residents have been able to influence and/or take a lead in the design, delivery and evaluation of local social prescribing programmes, based on residents’ needs and identified solutions.’
How can social prescribing put communities at the heart of healthcare?
“In order to see stronger community leadership in the social prescribing space, funding needs to be passed down to communities, and referrals into community activity need to be accompanied by link workers developing relationships with community groups.”
Local Trust’s research manager, Lucy Terry, reflects on what’s needed to put communities at the heart of healthcare.
Integrated neighbourhood working
We’re working with the NHS Confederation to promote and test community-led approaches to health and wellbeing in some of England’s most deprived neighbourhoods. Together, we will:
- Build a community of local leaders, sharing learning and driving change
- Find and share new evidence on the conditions for successful integrated approaches
- Influence and inform systemic changes to health and care at a national and system level
The case for change
We also worked with the NHS Confederation and PPL on the report, The case for neighbourhood health and care, which underlines that the support to change lives effectively exists in our neighbourhoods, but only if public sector resources and community assets can be brought together in the right way.
This report highlights learnings from Big Local areas including W12 Together, who have worked to find community-based solutions to improve access to health, and Par Bay Big Local, who have successfully set up initiatives to address social isolation and youth mental health.
