Today (8th July) is the first ever National Social Prescribing Link Worker Day! Organised by the National Association of Link Workers it aims “…to celebrate and showcase the contribution of social prescribing link workers in improving population health and wellbeing.” In support of this our podcast this week is the fifth in our series looking at Social Prescribing. Nick Sharples is Managing Partner at DNA Insight, a specialist training consultancy that is increasingly involved in training Social Prescribing Link Workers. In this episode he talks about the various models that are emerging for employing, recruiting and training Link Workers.

Show Notes

Nick describes his involvement in social prescribing (44secs)

Who employs the Link Workers? (1min 53secs)

Reluctance to outsource the role (3mins 30secs)

Outsourcing the role (4mins 16secs)

Competition for Link Workers – three options for recruitment (5mins 36secs)

External recruitment (6mins 40secs)

Recruiting from within the practice (7mins 16secs)

Advantages of the options – building an appropriate model (7mins 54secs)

The provision of training (9mins 18secs)

Resources for training (10mins 28secs)

How much budget to put aside? (11mins 02secs)

Effective working with large scale – prioritising (11mins 58secs)

Average workload (13mins 13secs)

Managing a caseload (13mins 53secs)

A practical example from Scotland (15mins 32secs)

Sharing best practice – learning co-ordinators (16mins 33secs)

Finding out more (17mins 31secs)

The DNA Insight Social Prescribing pages are here

Nick has put together a list of useful resources below:

• Future NHS Collaboration Platform https://future.nhs.uk/connect.ti/socialprescribing/groupHome hosted by the NHS Personalised Care Group – Request membership via [email protected]  and then access the Social Prescribing pages/Regional pages/Regional Discussion Forums

 

• Social Prescribing Network - https://www.westminster.ac.uk/patient-outcomes-in-health-research-group/projects/social-prescribing-network and @SocialPrescrib2 on Twitter

 

• Twitter Social Prescribing Wednesday - @SocialPresHour – every other Wednesday and hosted/organised by Elemental

 

• Friday afternoon (4:30pm to 5:30pm Fridays, 10am-11am Monday) Social Prescribing email meet-up [email protected]  Apply for membership at https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/social-prescribing or email [email protected]  if having difficulty.

 

• National Association of Link Workers www.connectlink.org Christiana Melam [email protected]   Professional body representing Social Prescribers/Link Workers with lots of useful resources for Link Workers and those employing them.