Social prescribing starts right here!
“I think it became apparent that it was actually, there’s a lot more diversity of people there (Neighbourhood House), and that it was perhaps really much more open to everyone,” General Practitioner
The Wellbeing Scripts project phase 1 was funded by the Commonwealth Government’s Men’s and Women’s Health Chronic Disease Prevention Program for a two-year period from 2020 to mid-2022. Health Futures Australia is the system-building partner in the project with the Central Highlands Association of Neighbourhood Houses.
The purpose of the project was to prototype and test a ‘light’ social prescribing approach between General Practitioners (GPs)/Health Practitioners and Neighbourhood Houses (NH). In a nutshell, this was about awareness raising of NHs and the valuable range of services and programs they offer for everyone in the community and creating an awareness for GPs of these services, and developing a simple referral mechanism/s between both. This is ‘light’ social prescribing, the signposting of places of referral.
The Western Primary Health Network funded a phase 2 for Wellbeing Scripts through to December 2022 with the aim of conducting and analysing further in-depth interviews and distilling the insights to shape a “Wellbeing Script: Framework for the Future”. This phase has introduced a second cohort of GPs, practice nurses, and psychologists into shaping how a Wellbeing Script could suit their practice, and how the scaling of a Wellbeing Script approach would work for general practice uptake across regional Victoria.
Through the interviews a range of ideas have emerged from incorporating wellbeing referral into health assessment and care plans, to a communications campaign to drive uptake of the tools already tested and in use in a number of practices. Importantly all are embedded in the need for a good business case which will demonstrate how cost effective a Wellbeing Script can be in the prevention and primary care system.
This is a promising ‘light touch’, and light resourcing prevention intervention, that has enormous potential for impact providing wellbeing referral opportunities for General Practices, and growth in uptake of community connection and healthy living programs for our communities.
A perfect relationship, social prescribing really can start with connecting General Practice with Neighbourhood Houses!
To learn more about the Wellbeing Scripts Project, please visit www.chanh.org.au/wellbeingscripts/ or contact us at engage@healthfutures.org.au
Dr Shelley Bowen, CEO Health Futures Australia
