Social prescribing is a means of enabling healthcare professionals and other professionals to refer a person to a Social Prescribing Link Work who supports people to avail of a range of local services, primarily provided by the community and voluntary sector. Examples include volunteering, arts activities, gardening, cookery and a range of physical activities and hobby groups. They may also link people back into HSE programmes and services for example Diabetes Support courses, Living Well programme, Stress prevention programmes or Smoking Cessation services. Social Prescribing has a number of key components:
- A referral from any healthcare professional/other professional or self-referral into the service
- an intervention between the service user and a social prescribing link worker. The intervention can take up to eight sessions
- Supporting the service user to access local voluntary community and social enterprise organisations or services through discussion and joint decision making
Who is social prescribing for?
Social prescribing is for adults over the aged of 18 years, including (but not exclusively) people:
- with one or more long-term conditions
- who need support with their mental health
- who are lonely or isolated
- who are frequent GP/ED attendees and may benefit from other social supports outside of clinical services
- who have complex social needs which affect their health and wellbeing.
Please note Social Prescribing is not a crisis service.
For more information contact Michelle Hannan
