Person-Centred Care toolkit
Social Prescribing
Social prescribing creates a formal way for primary care services to refer patients with social, emotional or practical needs to a variety of holistic, local, non-clinical services. In doing so, it also aims to support individuals to take greater control of their own health.
Social prescribing is sometimes referred to as a ‘community referral’ and often involves a link worker or navigator who helps to design a package of services or activities to meet their needs.
Providers of social prescribing should be able to ‘co-design’ solutions for people that consider the wider determinants of their health and help people to choose activities that address these needs. This might consider factors such as enabling people to engage with communities, be more active and eat more healthily, as well as many other priorities agreed together with the person.
Social prescribing encompasses prevention and early intervention as well as supporting the management and promotion of self-care for people with long term conditions, all of which can help to reduce future demand on primary care services.
Activities and services are often provided by voluntary and community sector organisations. The services available vary from sports, leisure and the arts, or activities to interventions focused on the development of skills or education.
Examples of social prescribing include:
- 'Museums on Prescription’ scheme
- Walking for Health’ run by The Ramblers and Macmillan Cancer Support
- Community Choirs run by The Stroke Association or Alzheimer’s Society
- Eco-therapy or ‘green prescriptions’
Resources
- The King's Fund: What is social prescribing?
- Health Education England: Social prescribing at a glance
- The Work Foundation: Social prescribing, a pathway to work?
- Nesta: More Than Medicine - new services for people powered health
- Social prescribing network
- National Voices: What is the role of VCSE organisations in care and support planning?
- NHS England: Social Prescribing
As part of our Person-Centred Care activities with NHS England, we are undertaking a project ‘Exploring approaches to measure the use and impact of social prescribing’. This work is undertaken through the RCGP Research and Surveillance Centre (RCGP RSC), in collaboration with the University of Oxford. The Social Prescribing Observatory has been published online and practice level dashboards are available to members of the RSC network. For more information or to sign up to the RSC network, please contact research@rcgp.org.uk.