SW AHSN Brings GPs, Charities and Social Enterprises Together in South West to Explore Social Solutions to Health Issues
Over 100 people from general practice, charities and social enterprises came together at the SW AHSN’s New Models of Care Networking event on 18 July to explore the common ground and interdependency between social prescribing, GP workforce planning, patient safety, community development and integrated working across organisations.
The ‘Social Prescribing Model’ is seen as a new/emerging ‘Model of Care’ in which primary care work in partnership with locally based non-medical community and voluntary services, to improve health outcomes by tackling the social determinants of poor health.
The event was organised as a result of a conversation convened between Dr Simon Jones, a GP located in Barnstaple, North Devon and Dr Julian Abel, a GP based on Cornwall, when Dr Jones first approached the SW AHSN for help in trying to find out what has worked and what hasn’t around social prescribing in the South West.
The event was structured in a unique flexible format to maximise participants’ opportunities to share and learn from one another. To begin, nine speakers with experience supporting, enabling or delivering social prescribing in the South West shared their learning and insight in five-minute back-to-back presentations. This was followed by two rounds of ‘Open Space’. Open Space is a way a way of eliciting questions, thoughts and lines of enquiry from delegates who can then convene around common areas of interest to discuss and focus on collective actions.
Caroline Powell, Director of Intelligence, SW AHSN said: “We were really excited to be able to host an event which brought together such an array of expertise and experience from across the South West. Delegates were really enthusiastic throughout the day, sharing learning about challenges and discussing potential solutions to them. We’re looking forward to continuing some of the conversations and exploring the outputs from the day.”
Exhibitors at the event included The Community Council for Somerset, Devon Community Foundation, Resonance Ltd, Health and Care Videos, University of Exeter and Yoga for Healthy Backs. Also present at the event was the SW AHSN and NHS England ‘New Models of Care portal’ – a web based platform available to the NHS to aid learning, share tools and the achievements of health organisations across the South West region.
The next steps are currently being discussed and will be communicated in soon.
Read the speaker presentations here
Some of the social prescribing activity happening in the South West can be seen on this map
Sign up to the Models of Care portal here
To see sli.do and twitter statistics view the infographic here
If you are currently involved in social prescribing activity in the South West or you would like to be involved in future work, please contact info@swahsn.com
