Community-Enhanced Social Prescribing: Integrating Community in Policy and Practice
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PERSPECTIVE ARTICLE
Community-Enhanced Social Prescribing: Integrating Community in Policy and Practice David Morris 1
& Paul
Thomas 2 & Julie Ridley 1 & Martin Webber 3
Received: 3 June 2020 / Accepted: 30 September 2020/ # The Author(s) 2020
Abstract The NHS Plan is introducing social prescribing link workers into GP surgeries in England. The link workers connect people to non-health resources in the community and voluntary sector, with the aim of meeting individual needs beyond the capacity of the NHS. Social prescribing models focus on enhancing individual wellbeing, guided by the policy of universal personalised care. However, they largely neglect the capacity of communities to meet individual need, particularly in the wake of a decade of austerity. We propose a model of community enhanced social prescribing (CESP) which has the potential to improve both individual and community wellbeing. CESP combines two evidence-informed models – Connected Communities and Connecting People – to address both community capacity and individual need. CESP requires a literacy of community which recognises the importance of communities to individuals and the importance of engaging with, and investing in, communities. When fully implemented the theory of change for CESP is hypothesised to improve both individual and community wellbeing. Keywords Social prescribing . Citizenship . Community . Connected communities .
Connecting people . Wellbeing
Introduction Community-enhanced social prescribing (CESP) is a new model of social prescribing combining community engagement, organisational change and individual-level
* David Morris [email protected]
1
Centre for Citizenship and Community, University of Central Lancashire, Preston, UK
2
University of West London, London, UK
3
International Centre for Mental Health Social Research, Department of Social Policy and Social Work, University of York, York, UK
International Journal of Community Well-Being
practice which aims to improve both community and individual wellbeing. It provides a way of thinking about the reciprocal value of individual and community wellbeing in the context of primary health care and local communities. In England there is substantial investment in social prescribing within primary care networks, providing a significant opportunity to improve community wellbeing. The National Health Service (NHS) Long Term Plan (NHS England 2019a) is arguably too narrowly focused on individual outcomes and new social prescribing schemes will need to engage with, and orient themselves more towards, local communities. The CESP model articulated in this paper provides a framework for achieving this. Key paradigms of community capacity building and connecting individuals to community currently run in parallel rather than being part of an integrated whole. CESP integrates these paradigms into a model which aligns them at theoretical, policy and practice levels. Uniquely, CESP is concerned with community wellbeing as well as individual wellbeing, a necessary component of
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