For most people, March often brings a month of longer and brighter days and perhaps an easter egg or three. For the social prescribing world, it is one of the busiest months on the calendar. March encompasses Social Prescribing Week and most importantly Social Prescribing Day on the 14th.
At Access Elemental Social Prescribing, we are no different and will be very busy celebrating everything there is to do with social prescribing.
We love seeing the impacts social prescribing can have on individuals to see their self-confidence blossom and be able to witness them regaining the spring in their step. For social prescribing link workers we love to see how they help to boost individuals’ confidence by concentrating on what matters to them.
This month we will be busy raising continuous awareness on the benefits of social prescribing and how it can go further than primary care to allow different sectors to work together to develop stronger multi-disciplinary teams to improve the overall mental health and wellbeing of any community.
February’s Social Prescribing: The activities and impact unveiled
February for a lot of people can be the season of love, what we love at Access Elemental Social Prescribing is being able to interact with as many different people as possible to showcase the importance of social prescribing.
This February was no different. We were very busy attending multiple events including Best Practice London where we thoroughly enjoyed being involved in discussions highlighting how health inequalities and health disparities can be reduced to improve the overall health and wellbeing of any community.
These events were great to take part in to address the challenges of social prescribing and how digital solutions can help it become more sustainable in the future as it continues to grow.
We were also busy in February highlighting how our social prescribing platform can help all primary care settings deliver better outcomes, work more collaboratively with neighbouring organisations, and secure better future funding through our module guide and our latest product video.
Unlocking Wellness on Social Prescribing Day
Undoubtedly one of the biggest things we are concentrating on this month, like all social prescribing organisations, is Social Prescribing Day. As much as we like to raise the awareness of social prescribing we also like to celebrate the great achievements our customers have experienced in the past year.
Like last year, we are going to be visiting a wide range of our customers to celebrate all things social prescribing with plenty of cakes and discussions about how best we can all work together to make social prescribing more sustainable in the future.
For more information or to see what we get up to live throughout social prescribing day follow us on X and LinkedIn where we will share the best bits of our day. Also, make sure you get involved by using #socialprescribingday2024 so everyone can see how you are getting involved.
Nurturing young minds – how can social prescribing help improve children’s mental health?
Children’s mental health has been a predominant topic in the press over the last month.
Children’s mental health is rapidly declining. Currently, 75% of children and young people who experience mental health problems aren’t getting the help that they need.
At least one in six children and young people aged 7 to 16 years have a probable mental health disorder which increases to 1 in 4 in 17 – 19 years old.
In 2022/2023 alone over half of all Childline’s counselling sessions were related to mental or emotional health and wellbeing.
To ensure we have the resources, support, and care needed we must be proactive in both supporting adult’s mental health as well as children’s. Over 32,000 emergency and urgent referrals to CAHMS were made in the last year.
Whilst there are multiple support services currently available to support children’s mental health budget restrictions and rising waiting times have led to many referrals being rejected due to not reaching the high criteria needed to have specialist support.
Funding has increased to help improve children’s mental health but only in acute care and not preventative or early intervention services. Social prescribing in children can offer that option by helping teach children from a young age the importance of talking about their feelings and understanding how the wider social determinants of health and other social factors out of our control can impact our mental health.
Here children can work with Link Workers to co-produce their social prescription on what matters to them and bridge the gap in mental health provision.
At Access Elemental Social Prescribing, we know that social prescribing for CYP is still in its infancy compared to social prescribing in adults but we know the potential and difference it can and will make both now and in the future.
How can we spread social prescribing across communities?
As we quickly approach spring, this next month will be another busy month for social prescribing. At Access Elemental we are looking forward to celebrating Social Prescribing Day but also raising awareness of how social prescribing models can be adopted in many different sectors to improve individuals’ mental health and wellbeing both now and in the future.
One of the ways we will be doing this is through one of our social prescribing in housing customers, Warm Wales, attending and speaking at our Wales Roadshow.
Here we will highlight the power of social prescribing in housing to help tackle fuel poverty and prevent both physical and mental health decline which has had a significant impact over the past few years due to the cost-of-living crisis.
Here Warm Wales will demonstrate how we have worked together to continue to build their social prescribing service year on year to work with primary care settings to help address the reasons for referral more effectively as well as talk about how the service is now going more widespread across the whole of Wales.
Learn more about how we help social prescribing services across all sectors work closely with primary care professionals to improve the mental health and wellbeing of individuals, reduce GP attendance and admissions, as well as build stronger multi-disciplinary teams to reduce the health inequalities across all communities, by contacting us today.
Discover more about The Access Group HSC:
Our portfolio of integrated solutions empowers professionals in healthcare, support, and social care services to deliver joined-up quality and preventative care. With over 30 years of experience, we support local authorities alongside small, medium, and large organisations, to focus on the individual with the freedom to make it personal.
