Community Prescribing Toolkit development for Social Prescribing
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Enhancing Social Prescribing: Development of a theoretically informed referral toolkit for link workers
IRAS ID
287980
Contact name
Tempany Morgan
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Nottingham Trent University Centre for Behavioural Research Methods
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 4 months, 28 days
Research summary
Research question: What would be included in an informed and collaboratively developed community prescribing toolkit for social prescribing referrals to community groups? \n\nSocial prescribing involves referring patients with non-medical needs to a link worker who helps them decide what concerns are important to them that need addressing. The link worker can help those with debt, isolation or loneliness by connecting people to local support, such as community groups, to address their needs. Groups improve our health and wellbeing through certain group dynamics like social support, but this depends on how strongly someone belongs to and identifies with a group. This is known as the social identity approach to health and wellbeing and is the theory guiding this study. If a service-user strongly belongs or identifies with a community group, they can access more social support, improving their health and wellbeing. Research shows that sometimes people are connected to community groups that do not meet their needs, so they do not identify with the group. Therefore, this study intends to work with social prescribing link workers, to develop a community prescribing toolkit, to help improve service-user referrals to community groups. \n\nNine link workers, nine community group leaders and nine social prescribing service-users, from Nottingham, Derbyshire, Leicestershire and Lincolnshire, will be interviewed online, using Microsoft Teams, Zoom or over the phone. All interviews will be audio recorded, written up onto a word document and examined by the doctoral candidate, leading to the development of a draft community prescribing toolkit. Institutional ethical approval has been given to interview link workers and community group leaders. NHS ethical approval is being sought to interview the nine service-users, who will be recruited via link workers. Therefore, this research intends to get NHS ethical approval to interview social prescribing service-users, to help develop a community prescribing toolkit.\n
REC name
North of Scotland Research Ethics Committee 2
REC reference
20/NS/0127
Date of REC Opinion
22 Oct 2020
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion