Issues like loneliness, stress and debt are all associated with increased mental health difficulties and physical symptoms leading to use of health and care services which are often poorly equipped to help. These problems can also exacerbate the difficulties experienced by people with underlying conditions, particularly those with multiple long-term conditions.
Social prescribing aims to connect people to non-medical support to improve their health and wellbeing and reduce health service use.
The potential of social prescribing to improve health and reduce costs is reflected in its prominence in national policy documents including the NHS Long Term Plan.
PenARC’s (ARC South West’s predecessor) work has been central to developing the evidence for social prescribing and translating it into policy and practice. Our achievements include:
- Collaboration with the UK Government’s Department for the Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (DEFRA), laying the foundation for the national roll-out of the Green Social Prescribing Programme. We are part of a consortium evaluating the outcomes for the first 8000 participants and will report to DEFRA and the Department of Health and Social Care on whole-system learning.
- Making a major contribution to the recent NHS England-supported Children and Young People’s Social Prescribing Toolkit, the first such toolkit in a previously neglected area.
- We established, and are a core partner in, the National Academy for Social Prescribing’s Academic Partners Collaborative. We have produced a series of evidence reviews that, combined with our presentation of this work to an All-Party Parliamentary Group, informed the commitment, set out in the NHS Long Term Workforce Plan, to boost investment and increase the number of social-prescribing link workers to three times the current level.
- Internationally our work is central to the WHO’s Social Prescribing Implementation Toolkit and is quoted in policy documents from the governments of Wales, Canada and Finland.
Updated Feb 2025.