Social prescribing in general practice.

Abstract

Social prescribing is a health pathway which enables GPs and others to refer patients with psychosocial challenges onto non-clinical support and activities within their local community. This is usually facilitated by a social prescribing link worker who may also offer one-to-one support to the patient in the form of a brief coaching intervention. With the recent commitment set out by The NHS Long Term Plan to recruit 1000 new social prescribing link workers by 2020/2021, link worker social prescribing has now come of age as a mainstream health intervention.1 While there has been controversy around the evidence base;2 as a ‘common sense’ approach to supporting those whose health challenges have a psycho-social component, social prescribing has always had much vocal support. There are now numerous social prescribing initiatives located within primary care services across the UK and a wealth of evaluations have documented not just patient health outcomes, but also the challenges of setting up such a service.3 This editorial will look at some of these challenges, as well as identify other important factors to take into consideration when designing and delivering a social prescribing intervention within primary care. There are various different models of social prescribing4 encompassing a range of interventions from straight signposting, where patients are directed to the nearest support group or activity within their local community, through to what can be described as a brief coaching intervention where patients receive more intensive ‘holistic’ support from a link worker. Link worker social prescribing has been shown to be particularly effective for those patients who need help with behaviour change and overcoming barriers to accessing further support elsewhere.5 However, this model of social prescribing inevitably comes at greater financial cost as link workers need to not only be employed, but trained …