This team cover adult patients, children, and complex mental health patients. They take a holistic approach to your health and wellbeing and manage your needs in a non-medical way, meaning that they don’t prescribe medication. They connect patients with community groups and agencies for practical and emotional support, and also provide support with hobbies, lifestyle, relationships, homelessness, employment, debt, isolation, sleep, abuse, and welfare problems.
We work in partnership with Teesside MIND for our Social Prescribing service.
You can find out more by clicking on this link for their website
What is Social Prescribing?
And find out more about Social prescribing in the video below.
Social Prescribing is a means of enabling health professionals and surgery staff to refer people to a range of local, non-clinical services ranging from support and advice for individuals experiencing debt, unemployment, housing or mobility issues to tackling loneliness by building social connections through joining local community groups, such as walking, singing or gardening groups.
Social prescribing gives Doctors, and other professionals a way to help people address their problems more effectively. Evidence shows that social prescribing can take pressure off the NHS by reducing the need for GP appointments and for medical prescriptions.
Examples of the help offered:
- Help someone who is isolated join a community group or a befriending service.
- Connect someone with a group such as arts and crafts, gardening or dancing.
- Support someone to link up with a service that can assist with debt, housing, emergency food.
- Link up a patients with specialist counselling services such as Impact on Teesside.
- Encourage exercise such as walking groups
- Low level emotional support
Social prescribing particularly works for a wide range of people, including people:
- with one or more long-term conditions
- who need support with their mental health
- who are lonely or isolated
- who have complex social needs which affect their wellbeing.
- young people aged 11-17 who are feeling worried, anxious, left out, not confident, are struggling with the pressures of school/friends/social activities, and want to connect with like minded people.
