Social adVentures has been delivering social prescribing in Salford for over 10 years and has been involved in pilot schemes, long running partnerships and evaluation studies all towards the development of the highly successful and robust social prescribing scheme that is in Salford today.
We have a large team of social prescribers including geographical specific Community Connectors, a Connector for Children and Families and, a Diabetes Engagement Worker.
Social prescribing plays an important role in building resilient and self sufficient communities. Designed to be navigators for services and activities in the community, the Community Connector works with individuals 121 to help them build services around their lives. This 121 support helps individuals to access services that exist within the community but also works as a motivating factor to help people make a change and to stick at new programmes.
Crucially, social prescribing reduces the workload of GPs as the GPs, their receptionists (and often other medical professionals) can refer patients into the social prescribing service. This is ideal for patients with mental health concerns and, is also ideal for helping patients to access exercise, smoking cessation, social isolation activities, benefits advice, volunteering and much more. Often the biggest impact is seen in the GPs revolving door patients, who reduce the number of GP visits as they start to become more independent and resilient from utilising services in their community.
Social Prescribing Social Return on Investment Report
This report was produced by Fox Advising in 2012 when Social adVentures was trialing approaches to social prescribing. It looked at the impact of social prescribers working with individuals to refer into community based services which were local to them.
It found that for every £1 spent the net social return on investment was £10.12. The report stated “the project demonstrated a profound impact on the lives of the participants….For a comparatively small initial outlay, considerable benefit was added.”
Wellbeing Matters is a Salford wide social prescribing service led by Salford CVS. Anchor organisations across the city hosts community connectors provider a hyper local service.
Social adVentures is an anchor organisation for Wellbeing Matters and hosts 7 community connectors under this scheme.
