Is Social Prescribing Working?

Healthwatch Kingston Upon Thames carried out research Between November 2019 and March 2020 by conducting a series of telephone interviews with consenting users of the Community Connector Service at Staywellasking about the medium-term impact of the service on their health and wellbeing. In total, 22 people provided a response.

Healthwatch Kingston Upton Thames found that 83% of respondents who answered said they were very pleased or pleased, in retrospect, to have been referred to the service. 87% of respondents who answered were of the opinion that the service was very useful or useful. Every respondent who answered said that the Community Connector with whom they met was either very helpful (71%) or helpful (29%). The additional comments about the Community Connectors were also very positive and there was a strong sense that what the respondents valued above all else was that someone, sometimes for the first time in a long time, was actually taking a personal as well as a professional interest in their welfare. When asked whether users had taken part in any new activities - as a result of their contact with a Community Connector -there was a greater divide in the feedback, with 50% saying yes and 50% saying no.

Healthwatch Kingston Upon Thames recommends that funding of the community connector service, or a similar such intensive social prescribing service in Kingston, be maintained and that the potential for the service to reach, and benefit, a wider range of people be explored. They also recommend that funders (especially the Primary Care Networks) and service providers (in particular Staywell) find a way to further assess and evaluate the medium-term benefits to service users of the Community Connector Service and any similar such service that is devised in the future.