Update on a range of exciting social prescribing projects and how they are delivering more for the communities they serve, and securing better data and more funding to do so, by utilising digital social prescribing.
It has been a busy month for us at Access Elemental Social Prescribing as we help a range of new social prescribing projects to get up and running with our digital social prescribing platform.
Our platform is proving to be effective in an ever expanding range of scenarios, to help social prescribing projects reach and be accessed by more people, and enabling those projects to gather data, report on and evidence the impact of their initiatives.
In Wales, both Hwyel Dda University Health Board and Y Dref Werdd have selected Access Elemental Social Prescribing as their digital platform.
The green light for Y Dref Werdd and Access Elemental Social Prescribing
The aptly named Y Dref Werdd (in English, The Green Town) is a fantastic environmental community project based in the Vale of Ffestiniog. The project has 34 parts covering areas as diverse as helping families to reduce their energy usage, guiding individuals to gain training and qualifications in conservation, enabling people to improve health and well-being by spending time in the fresh air and working to keep the local environment clean, by removing rubbish from rivers, tackling invasive species and more.
It’s a great example of Green Social Prescribing and through the use of our digital platform, Y Dref Werdd aim to demonstrate the impact of their project, which should help them receive additional funding from the Regional Investment Fund.
Rhian Williams, Wellbeing Project Worker, Y Dref Werdd VCSE said: “Here at the Dref Werdd we are excited to be working with Elemental so that we can strengthen the way we reach different partners, and that we will have an efficient way of saving data, and reporting on our interventions. Being able to prove that the work we do with green prescribing, will be reported efficiently.”
Cross-county collaboration in West Wales
Meanwhile, further South, Hwyel Dda University Health Board are utilising our platform to support their ambition to establish the West Wales region as a connected and kind community. Encompassing the counties of Carmarthenshire, Ceredigion and Pembrokeshire, they will embed their ‘Regional Principles for Community Connectedness and Social Prescribing’.
Across their seven clusters, the use of our digital platform will enable a simple referral, communication and reporting tool to be used across the three counties.
The Pembrokeshire Community Hub Manager commented that: “The West Wales system are really excited to roll out a single tool which will enable us to better understand and grow the impact of our social prescribing and community connector community of practice. This will enable us a method of identifying need and developing plans to have an exponentially greater impact on the health and wellbeing of our communities.”
Complete picture of the client journey
Sticking to the theme of collaboration, the Verve Healthy Living Network is a partnership between a range of VCSE organisations and the Southern Health and Social Care Trust in Northern Ireland. The Verve aims to deliver healthy living programmes in the Craigavon area, to older people struggling with loneliness, to younger people suffering with anxiety, or anyone else in need of support.
Access Elemental Social Prescribing will enable those working on the project to follow the client’s journey from start to end, while gathering data on the benefits of this collaborative approach. The impact of the project can be measured collectively with the digital platform, which will reduce administrative burdens for all partners involved.
Lisa McAliskey, Promoting Wellbeing Division Manager, Craigavon and Banbridge locality area
“We are really looking forward to implementing Elemental technology with the Verve Project here in Craigavon in a bid to build on our existing local networks and connections within the Craigavon Neighbourhood Renewal area. We have so many excellent community based programmes, services and interventions in the area and this platform will provide us with a much needed central hub for creating our own directory of services and to collate information related to the project which will enable the effective measurement of the impact it has on our target population”.
Reducing admin, increasing wellbeing and access
Staying in Northern Ireland, the Northern Health and Social Care Trust (NHSCT) serves a population of approximately 479,000 people, making it the largest geographical trust in Northern Ireland.
NHSCT realised that the maintenance of multiple, dissociated directories across their area created a great deal of duplication, which was only worsened during COVID. A consensus was reached over the need for an accessible, unified directory of services which could be easily maintained and updated.
A needs based analysis of available systems led NHSCT to select Access Elemental Social Prescribing, the use of which should enable NHSCT to reduce admin time, develop a robust evidence base for their project and make it easier for citizens to self-serve.
Hugh Nelson, Head of Service, Health, and Wellbeing Team.
“We are excited to launch our Connect North platform with Elemental. Many of the unique features offered by Elemental were key outcomes from our engagement events with stakeholders, service providers, and service users over the last few years.
Having the shared vision realised within the NHSCT area will be hugely beneficial to those who offer services, those who promote them, and those who benefit from them, redirecting time towards client interventions.”
Learn more about digital platforms for social prescribing
These are just a selection of the latest projects to roll out Access Elemental Social Prescribing, to support them in their missions to improve access to services, health and wellbeing across their communities and for each individual within them.
Learn more about the benefits of a digital social prescribing platform.
