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Social Prescribing - The Living Well Team
The Living Well Team provides an enhanced social prescribing service to the citizens of Norwich.
Social prescribing is a means of enabling GPs, nurses and other care professionals to refer people to a range of local, non-clinical services so that their needs can be addressed in a holistic way. This reduces the need for formal interventions and enables clinical resources to be directed to those most in need of them.
The Social Prescribing model in Norwich stands as an exemplar of the benefit of high-quality advice targeted to help clients resolve complex issues that would otherwise worsen their health. The service not only helps to change lives for the better but reduces the need for individuals to access health services for non-clinical support in the first place.
This service is delivered by:
Social prescribing has been an amazing support for me. The service never judged me when I shared some personal things and it went above and beyond to offer help.
A 2022 evaluation highlighted significant reductions in patient inquiries, with one GP noting a 50% decline after integrating Social Prescribing referrals. We focus on sustainable, clientspecified outcomes and our unique combination of advice services ensures a mere 1% referral rate to the broader VCSE sector.
Since the start of the project, our consortium has aided over 5,000 OneNorwich patients. Significantly, our services predominantly cater to those experiencing pronounced deprivation; notably 55% of our clients come from the top 20% of deprivation indices in Norwich. This focus is critical to addressing inequality in the health outcomes that some Norwich citizens experience.
