The Grapevine

Mind Cymru Social Prescribing Project: developing a social prescribing service suitable for people with mental health problems

Social prescribing is a great way to connect people to the services and activities that can get them involved in their communities and help them to feel better.

However, many things can get in the way and stop people doing the things they want to do. The Primary Care Hub report Social Prescribing in Wales (May 2018), noted concern over the dropout rate between referral and engagement.

Sometimes there are practical issues, like time, transport or childcare. However, we at Mind know that mental health problems can have a massive impact as well: we may feel too anxious or depressed; we may feel worried about going to new places or meeting new people. Sometimes just getting up in the morning is difficult!

In 2018, Welsh Government awarded Mind Cymru a grant to develop and test a model of social prescribing suitable for people with mental health problems.

Over the last three years, four local Minds worked with Mind Cymru to co-design and deliver this service. Lockdown has meant that even more people have been experiencing mental health problems than usual. During this time, our link workers have supported over 2000 people in some of the most vulnerable communities in Wales. The key features of our service are: • Link workers with a knowledge of mental health problems: they work with their clients to identify what they want to do, but they also identify underlying barriers. They then help their clients to deal with the feelings that might stop them. • A person-centred approach, with a wide range of prescribing routes depending on the needs of the individual. This might include ways to help them deal with anxiety over debt and housing, as well as access to the more traditional social prescribing services, like gardening clubs, choirs and walking groups • This approach also means that link workers need time to build the relationship and provide the support needed to ensure that clients are able to do what they want to do. • Our project used ‘Uplift funding’ to improve access to things like counselling and anxiety management. These provided additional support to help clients manage their feelings.

Our clients often have complex needs that require a number of routes. However, during the pandemic, some of these have not been available.

Our link workers have supported clients with their anxiety about Covid and helped them to cope when other services were not available. They have helped people to deal with their feelings of grief and loss, as well as the more practical issues of job insecurity and financial worries. We are very proud that 98% of our full service users said that we had helped them to achieve their goals. The pandemic has meant that we were not able to complete the planned control trial, but we still have important learning to share. We held a national online event on 18th November to share our learning. If you are interested to learn more, please contact mcsocialprescribing@mind.org.uk.