I became a Tutor for Connexus a few years ago now. Many of my national social prescribing colleagues had been a part of developing and writing the original qualification after NHS England identified the need for more formalised learning around social prescribing, especially for Link Workers.
One of the original authors, Marcello Bertotti needed to leave his teaching role on the course and invited me to apply.
So, I now teach Unit 1 of the course and love to meet the new students and support them to start their exciting learning journey around the key principles if social prescribing.
Often, when new students start the course, they are nervous and may not have studied formally for a number of years. It’s very satisfying as a lecturer, to guide people back into learning and support their confidence building in a subject that I am so passionate about.
I love to hear where students come from and their experience of social prescribing and working in communities and then have the ability to facilitate them sharing their stories with others in their cohort. This story telling is key to building the bigger, qualitative picture of social prescribing.
My first experience of social prescribing was when I worked in a CCG in my local area, and it was before the NHS England Long Term Plan and development of a national social prescribing model.
I was lead programme manager is facilitating the codesign of a new system wide social prescribing model.
I engaged over 40 organisations in developing the model across 3 large, key towns and during its development I trained over 600 social prescribing champions to support a very small team of Link Workers. We also worked to develop a new web based, public facing referral website that could connect local people directly to over 200 local activities and support offers.
This was truly a transformational model of its time, of social prescribing. It didn’t just focus on the intervention of social prescribing between the Link Worker and person but engaged fully in the community capacity building element in a collaborative approach.
It recognised form the outset, the need for and power of collaborative, trusting relationships in social prescribing and that to be successful and sustain the model, that “social prescribing is everyone’s business”.
Although of course the social prescribing intervention is key, to me, much of the power of social prescribing lies in the broader system wide social capital that is created through the architecture of successful, quality designed social prescribing.
I have worked over thirty years in and for public services and over twenty of those have been in health. I am, by nature, a connector and believe wholly in the importance of community in supporting health. In my roles this has been particularly focused on the VCSE sector.
I had my first experience of social prescribing over twenty years ago and I was impressed by the approach of how medical worlds and community worlds could be brought together – shifting towards a holistic model of health. Sadly, the initiative never gained traction at the time and slowly disappeared, but I never forgot the opportunity I saw of how to sit the pathogenic model of primary care right next to the salutogenic* opportunity of social prescribing. This gives to focus on the person and what matters to them, helping to create their resilience toolkit, building health, wealth and happiness.
Over these last thirty years working in public health, I have seen how the medical model of health and fixing people, whether at a GP Practice or a hospital, always top trumps preventing ill health when decision are made whether – operational or financial, even when we know that our current medical models of care are not sustainable. This has made me all the more determined to give attention and focus in particular to social prescribing.
I am an advocate of social prescribing because it is an opportunity, when co-designed in its fullest model, for everyone to work together to contribute to improving individual’s and communities’ health and wellbeing. It focusses on people’s and communities’ strengths and assets. It should also place the VCSE on an equal footing with public service and it’s a great way to work together to utilise carefully our precious limited resource. It also very importantly can shift to focus to people creating their own health and wellbeing in communities, breaking our dependency model on the NHS and other statutory services.
I am an advocate and champion for social prescribing because it makes a positive difference in people’s lives and communities and can be transformational – helping people to live their best life.
*Salutogenic means the creation of health. It comes from the Latin word salus, which means “health”, and the Greek word genesis, which means “origin” or “beginning”. It is why we sometimes use the word “salutations” instead of hello – we are wishing someone good health.