Social Prescribing: what can it offer different groups in Nottingham?

Health care today is continually developing.  Social Prescribing forms part of this evolution and explores how non-medical approaches can help to alleviate health challenges in our communities.  In and around Nottingham citizens have taken part in a series of initiatives aimed at testing this approach at our colleagues have been evaluating its value.

As a tool for supporting individuals to deal with issues, Social Prescribing takes a holistic approach and offers support delivered from within their community and based on its assets. It is a novel health initiative, which has gained significant attention.  Locally we have seen a number of Social Prescribing programmes delivered for citizens and our researchers at NTU have completed two largescale evaluations of these provisions. They have tested the impact of delivering support to individuals in our communities in this way.

Due to its obvious link to place, Nottingham Civic Exchange is supporting these researchers to share their findings and to explore how we can take their insights and deliver them to new vulnerable groups and issues. Can Social Prescribing make a difference away from health to bolster communities and those within them?

On Monday 16 December from 10 am, we will be hosting a full day’s conversation about the value of Social Prescribing.  We want to work with you to understand how it could make a difference to migrants, hosting communities locally and individuals dealing with financial stress.  We want to understand how these two groups and organisations working with them, see and understand social prescribing to explore how it could add value to their lives. The aim is to move the model away from purely medical territory to understand how it could support people to tackle other social issues. Through our work on economic insecurity and Good Work Nottingham, and experiences of refugees and other migrants we recognise the challenge many individuals face locally. Our interviews with citizens highlight both the resilience and relentlessness of their day-to-day lives and structural barriers to positive outcomes.  We want to explore ways of working to support individuals and communities to maximise local assets and explore how they can support themselves and their neighbours to flourish.

This full day session will share findings from the evaluations and the wider research before focusing on these two distinct areas of opportunity for Social Prescribing.  We want to work with you to challenge this approach and offer constructive ideas for how we could take these methods forward here in Nottingham.

We hope this event is useful for anyone working with these groups, those with experience of Social Prescribing and those interested in exploring how new approaches can make a positive difference for individuals and communities. We are especially interested to welcome people who associate with each of our two groups. It is key that individuals, groups or organisations who see themselves as or working with migrants and those who may be dealing with financial challenges join us to share their ideas on this important topic.

This workshop is free to attend but we ask that you register online to help us plan the day.  Follow the link below to book and see further details of the agenda. Please share this link with partners and those you think should be with us. Colleagues from Groups, Identities, and Health research group will be sharing thoughts online via @gihntu and #NTUSocialPrescribing if you can't come along.

Book your place here