I attended an exciting AHP Sustainability Networking event last week that got me thinking about a lot of things but in particular social prescribing.
Social prescribing can be considered sustainable in that it complements principles of prevention (situated within the community) and enabling and encouraging patient self-care (for more about sustainable healthcare and how it applies to AHPs see here and here – or our recent Bulletin article).
In honesty however I knew very little about social prescribing beyond what I gathered from the name and was curious to learn more and think how it applies to SLTs in particular….
In 2019 , the Royal Society for Public Healthcare, along with Public Health England (PHE) and NHS Improvement developed a framework to support AHPS to increase their social prescribing and to create a vision of social prescribing for AHPs.
In a nutshell (and you can read more here – it is not long and an interesting read) social prescribing means referring to community non -clinical services. It is holistic, considering people’s range of needs ( e.g. psychological, social, economic, physical etc) and acknowledges that there are many determinants of health beyond the obvious health related behaviours. Social prescribing occurs across a spectrum, according to how much input you are having:
-Active signposting: providing information about resources (e.g. local art groups for aphasia)
- Referral to a link worker, who are often employed by primary care networks and can link people into a range of services.
- Acting as social prescribers: actively supporting patients exploring the community resources (, e.g. SLTs have taken the lead in this field for adults with learning disabilities and autism).
- AHPS as promoters and developers of social prescribing (eg. getting involved in local networks, helping to develop community resources).
On reflection I was pleasantly pleased to see that I already am social prescribing – mostly as an active signposter. For example, I see people with voice difficulties who often have coinciding stressors. I regularly signpost to our local wellbeing hub and have advised re other more specific needs – e.g. community based relationship counselling. Learning about social prescribing has prompted me to seek my local link workers and share this information with my colleagues.
FINAL THOUGHTS:
It's nice to know that as SLTs we are often socially prescribing without even knowing it. As a profession we should do more to celebrate our good work and advocate for our profession as being well- placed to support the move to sustainable healthcare.
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