Today is #SocialPrescribingDay. But what is social prescribing? Social Prescribing is a non-medical approach to support your health and wellbeing.
Social Prescribers or Link Workers give you time to focus on ‘what matters to me’, taking a holistic approach to people’s health and wellbeing. People may visit their GP because they may be feeling stressed about their work, money, or because they are lonely and isolated. But these problems cannot be fixed by medicine, or doctors alone. Social Prescribing aims to support people with a wide range of social, emotional, or practical needs whilst improving mental health and physical wellbeing. We connect people to community groups and statutory services for practical and emotional support.
It’s important to look further and broader when trying to improve our health and wellbeing and not just focusing on medicine. Social Prescribing takes full recognition of people’s beliefs, hopes, interests and abilities. When supporting someone who would like to improve their health and wellbeing, we do this. By walking alongside them on their journey.
Social prescribing support
- Our support might look like:
- Taking the time to find out what is important to you right now
- Exploring whole family issues
- Connecting to you to advice (benefits/housing/legal)
- Addressing social isolation by building connections
- Introducing and accompanying to community activities
- Creating community activities where none exist – e.g., mums’ walking group/local history photography project
This helps to reduce the impact on GP Practices, by reducing the amount of time that GPs are spending on non-medical issues. Getting out and engaging in activities can help with many things. From anxiety to stress, it’s a way for us to ground ourselves, especially if it’s through activities in nature.
Some examples of activities we link people to are:
- Open water swimming
- Volunteering
- Gardening
- Sports
- Painting
- Bike rides
Our Social Prescribers are able to refer to our partner service Cycling without Age in Portsmouth and Hayling Island. The service supports people who are lonely and isolated by taking them out on a trike to link with their local community. We work with partners like The National Academy for Social Prescribing who make it possible to help so many people!
Special thank you to
