25.10.19
New national academy for social prescribing launched
Health and Social Care Secretary Matt Hancock has revealed his ambition to make social prescribing schemes as accessible as medical care on the NHS.
Health, wellbeing and social welfare will all be addressed through social prescribing by connecting the public to their community services.
Activities including art and singing classes in the community could be available to improve aspects of health amongst patients.
The National Academy for Social Prescribing will work to standardise the quality and range of social prescribing available, increase awareness using evidence-based results and develop and share best practice.
Other aims including the uniting of all partners from health, housing and local government with arts, culture and sports organisations to enhance the range of options available and the developing, training and accreditation across all sectors.
The government will invest £5m in funding into the academy, which will be led by Professor Helen Stokes-Lampard, outgoing Chair of the Royal College of General Practitioners.
In additional to the benefits made available to patients in need, the social prescribing could reduce the burden on the NHS.
Health and Social Care Secretary Matt Hancock said:
“This academy is much more important than any one individual. It’s about all of us in health, arts, culture, sport, communities coming together around one simple principle: that prevention is better than cure.”
“Social prescribing is a huge part of this. There are thousands of people up and down the country right now who are already benefiting from activities like reading circles, choir groups and walking football.
“The National Academy for Social Prescribing will act as a catalyst to bring together the excellent work already being done across the NHS and beyond, building on our NHS Long Term Plan’s ambition to get over 2.5 million more people benefitting from personalised care within the next 5 years.”
In some areas of the country, patients who have long-term conditions and access to social prescribing support have reported feeling less isolated, attended 47% fewer hospital appointments and made 38% fewer visits to A&E.
However, only 60% of Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) use social prescribing or patients suffering from anxiety, ill mental health and dementia.
Outlined in the NHS Long Term Plan, over 1,000 trained social prescribing link workers are to be recruited by 2020-21, by which time 900,000 people will have hopefully been referred to social prescribing schemes.