Evidencing Impact

Social prescribing is a process that recognises the value of community systems such as local art, physical activity or social clubs to people’s health. Its growing role as an emerging clinical pathway within the NHS is a clear recognition of the impact of these activities on health on mental health outcomes. The social prescribing process involves the appointment of local link workers, to whom GPs can refer patients, who work holistically with them to find appropriate local activities to improve their health.

Social prescribing’s recognition of the impact of activities such as creativity and the arts on health creates a significant opportunity for organisations working in the field to grow their work within communities. At the same time, it demands some adjustments – training and support for workers to help them become confident in understanding health issues that may have triggered a prescription to their activity (eg young people’s mental health) and a thorough understanding of how to monitor and evaluate work to show evidence of clinical outcomes.

Social prescribing has been rolled out most widely so far to older people, and so these pages aim to support organisations advocating for the value and impact of social prescribing for younger people, as well as supporting you to plan effective projects that can operate in the wider context of growing social prescribing practices.

The NHS Long Term Plan commits to significantly expanding the number of social prescribing link workers in primary care, and is on track to exceed the commitment to 1000 additional link workers by April 2021, rising to 4000 by 2023. Social prescribing and community-based support enable GPs, other health and care practitioners, and local agencies, to refer people to a link worker who can then give time and focus on what matters to them as an individual. For some people this will be green social prescribing, which links them to nature-based interventions and activities, such as local walking for health schemes, community gardening and food-growing projects, for others it will be activities that fall in the arts and sports sector.

In the Long Term Plan NHS England committed to building the infrastructure for social prescribing in primary care:

there will be 1,000 new social prescribing link workers in place by 2020/21, with significantly more after that, so that

at least 900,000 people will be referred to social prescribing by 2023/24.

This is part of the drive to Universal Personalised Care that will see at least 2.5 million people benefiting from personalised care by 23/24.

In 2020, the University of East London published an evaluation of the Children and Young People Social Prescribing pilot project run by Street Games: https://repository.uel.ac.uk/item/88×15

Some key headlines are:

The role of the young people Social Prescribing Link Working is even more complex than the adult’s role, particularly in terms of balancing primary focus on the young people with the input and needs of parents/carers, and the need to coordinate support amongst a large number of providers, for example in relation to schools and CAMHS.

Young People reported that link workers contributed to improving their sense of autonomy, reduced their sense of ‘stigma’ around mental health challenges, and filled a gap in mental health service provision by providing almost immediate access to non-clinically based emotional support

Mental well-being followed a positive trend recording a statistically significant positive change between baseline and follow up, confirming that social prescribing is an effective mental health service.

Sheffield young people social prescribing service showed a social return on investment above average if compared to adults’ services.  (research shared by the National Academy for Social Prescribing)

Further information about Social Prescribing:

The Kings Fund is an independent charitable organisation working to improve health and care in England. https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/publications/social-prescribing

The National College of Social Prescribing – an organisation which exists to advance and develop the practice https://socialprescribingacademy.org.uk

NHS introduction to social prescribing https://www.england.nhs.uk/personalisedcare/social-prescribing/

Evidence about value of social prescribing https://www4.shu.ac.uk/research/cresr/sites/shu.ac.uk/files/social-economic-impact-rotherham.pdf