Social Prescriber

Job responsibilities

Promoting social prescribing, its role in self-management, and the wider determinants of health.

Build relationships with key staff in GP practices within the local Primary Care Network (PCN), attending relevant meetings, becoming part of the wider network team, providing reports including monitoring and evaluation including general feedback on social prescribing.

Be proactive in developing strong links with all local agencies to encourage referrals, recognising what they need to be confident in the service to make appropriate referrals.

Work in partnership with all local agencies to raise awareness of social prescribing and how partnership working can reduce pressure on statutory services, improve health outcomes and enable a holistic approach to care.

Seek regular feedback about the quality of service and impact of social prescribing on referral agencies.

Be proactive in encouraging self-referrals and connecting with all local communities, particularly those communities that statutory agencies may find hard to reach.

Provide personalised support

Give people time to tell their stories and focus on what matters to me. Build trust with the person, providing non-judgmental support, empathy respecting diversity and lifestyle choices. Work from a strength-based approach focusing on a persons assets.

Be a friendly source of information about wellbeing and prevention approaches. Help people identify the wider issues that impact on their health and wellbeing, such as debt, poor housing, being unemployed, loneliness and caring responsibilities.

Work with the person, their families and carers and consider how they can all be supported through social prescribing.

Help people maintain or regain independence through living skills, adaptations, enablement approaches and simple safeguards.

Work with individuals to co-produce a simple personalised support plan based on the persons priorities, interests, values and motivations including what they can expect from the groups, activities and services they are being connected to and what the person can do for themselves to improve their health and wellbeing.

Where appropriate, facilitate the introduction of people to community groups, activities and statutory services, ensuring they are comfortable. Follow up to ensure they are happy, able to engage, included and receiving good support.

Where people may be eligible for a personal health budget, help them to explore this option as a way of providing funded, personalised support to be independent, including helping people to gain skills for meaningful employment, where appropriate.

Support community groups and Voluntary organisations to receive referrals:

Forge strong links with local organisations, community and neighbourhood level groups, utilising their networks and building on whats already available to create a map or menu of community groups and assets.

Develop supportive relationships with local organisations, community groups and statutory services, to make timely, appropriate and supported referrals for the person being introduced.

Ensure that local community groups and organisations being referred to have basic procedures in place for maintaining vulnerable individuals are safe and where there are safeguarding concerns work with all partners to deal appropriately with issues. Where such policies and procedures are not in place, support groups to work towards this standard before referrals are made to them.

Support local groups to act in accordance with Information Governance policies and procedures, ensuring compliance with GDPR.

Work collectively with all local partners to ensure community groups are strong and sustainable:

Encourage people who have been connected to community support through social prescribing to volunteer and give their time freely to others, in order to build their skills, confidence and strengthen community resilience.

Develop a team of volunteers within your service to provide buddying support for people, starting new groups and finding creative community solutions to local issues.

Encourage people, their families and carers to provide peer support and to do things together, such as setting up new community groups or volunteering.

Provide a regular confidence survey to community groups receiving referrals, to ensure that they are strong, sustained and have the support they need to be part of social prescribing.

General tasks, including data capture:

Work sensitively with people, their families and carers to capture key information, enabling tracking of the impact of social prescribing on their health and wellbeing.

Encourage people, their families and carers to provide feedback and to share their stories about the impact of social prescribing on their lives.

Work closely with GP practices within the PCN to ensure that social prescribing referral codes are inputted into the EMIS system and that the persons use of the NHS can be tracked, adhering to Data Protection legislation and Data Sharing Agreements with the Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG).

Professional development:

Work with your line manager to undertake continual personal and professional development, completing the NHSE/I online learning, taking an active part in reviewing and developing the roles and responsibilities.

Adhere to organisational policies and procedures, including Confidentiality, Safeguarding, Lone Working, Information Governance, GDPR and Health and Safety.

Work with your line manager to access regular clinical supervision, to enable you to deal effectively with the difficult issues that people present.

Miscellaneous:

Undertake any tasks consistent with the level of the post and the scope of the role, ensuring that work is delivered in a timely and effective manner.

Duties may vary from time to time, without changing the general character of the post or the level of responsibility.

Person Specification

Experience

Essential

• Experience of working directly in a community development context, Adult Health and Social Care, Learning Support or Public Health/Health Improvement either paid or voluntary.
• Experience of supporting people, their families and carers in a related role either paid or voluntary.
• Experience of working with the Voluntary sector including with volunteers and small community groups.
• Experience of partnership/collaborative working and building relationships across a variety of organisations.

Desirable

• Experience of working in Primary Care/GP Practice.
• Experience of data collection and providing reports for monitoring and evaluating to assess the impact of services.
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