Social prescribing is transforming how the health and care system works with people to address the wider factors affecting their health and wellbeing. With an estimated 1 in 5 GP appointments now addressing wider social needs rather than acute medical issues, the rationale for this is evident.
But with the vast majority of social prescribing referrals being made to activities delivered by voluntary and community sector organisations, it’s vital that they are involved as equal partners in this process and funded properly.
Over the past 12 months we’ve been working with Transformation Partners in Health and Care (TPHC) and North East London Health and Care Partnership to pilot a new, collaborative approach to funding social prescribing activities in the community.
Community Chests for Social Prescribing are funding pots which bring together a range of local partners - from both the statutory sector and the local community - to collectively agree health and wellbeing priorities, and allocate funding to voluntary and community groups accordingly.
Clinicians, commissioners, link workers, community workers, volunteers and residents are around the same table working together to share insights on where the need in a community is greatest and who is best placed to meet that need locally.
This ensures that social prescribing pathways are made accessible and relevant to the population groups that stand to benefit the most. It also means that community groups involved in this provision can get the vital support they need to grow existing activities or develop new ones.
Additionally they are shared investment funds; combining funding from the NHS, the local authority and other sources such as philanthropy and local business.
The result? More integrated, equitable partnership working in local places, more sustainable social prescribing pathways and better health outcomes for those most impacted by health inequalities.
That’s the vision. Today we are launching the Community Chest for Social Prescribing explainer video we’ve made in partnership with TPHC to share this vision. Our thinking has been inspired and informed by existing social prescribing funding initiatives from across the country. The model is a work in progress and is intended to be flexible to different contexts. We are continuing to engage partners from across the health and care system to refine it further and to build up a toolkit and case studies that can help others to seed this approach locally.
In our next blog post we’ll dig into some of the practicalities of setting up and running Community Chests for Social Prescribing, sharing the learnings from our experience of launching seven Community Chest pilots in North East London.
If you are interested in this work and you’d like to talk more - please do get in touch.