Social prescribing is a way of linking people with sources of support within the community to improve their health and wellbeing.
Social prescribing enables local organisations, including GP practices, to refer people to a link worker. Link workers give people time and focus on what matters to the person through shared decision making, personalised care and support planning.
Link workers can draw on a range of evidence informed models to guide conversations on personal wellbeing.
Developed by the Wellbeing and Resilience Centre and South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute, this model identifies factors that allow individuals, communities and societies to flourish.
Positive emotion
Engagement
Relationships
Meaning
Achievement
Plus
Five Ways to Wellbeing was developed by the New Economics Foundation as part of the Government’s Foresight project on Mental Capacity and Wellbeing.
Read our blogs on Five Ways to Wellbeing and the evidence gaps.
The model identifies five evidence-based actions to improve wellbeing
Developed by Action for Happiness, the Ten Keys to Happier Living identifies actions that consistently tend to have a positive impact on people’s happiness and wellbeing. The first five keys (GREAT) are about how we interact with the outside world in our daily activities. They are based on the Five Ways to Wellbeing. The second five keys (DREAM) come from inside us and depend on our attitude to life.
The Health Foundation has prepared a series of infographics, accompanying blogs and commentaries to describe and explain the social determinants of health in an accessible and engaging way.
Based in London, this global NGO builds multi-sector collaborations to address non-communicable diseases’ leading risk factors by promoting three behaviour changes:
Local areas are using a range of wellbeing outcome measurement tools, such as the ONS wellbeing scale and the Short Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale (SWEMWBS) to measure the impact of their social prescribing activity.
The What Works Centre for Wellbeing has online guidance to help organisations understand, measure, evaluation and analyse their wellbeing impact.
If you’ve carried out an evaluation of an intervention that used a wellbeing framework, or are planning to, please let us know so we can begin building an evidence base. You can email us at info@whatworkswellbeing.org.
