Progress
Some Background
Some time around 2006, Paul Hazelden started to hear some GPs talking about patients they were seeing on a regular basis, patients who came in with one minor problem after another, or who were regularly worried about someething or other and wanted to be ‘checked out’. This was the year in which the Department of Health proposed the introduction of ‘social prescriptions’ for people with long-term conditions.
It became clear that some patients were going to their GP for reasons other than the medical concerns they were talking about, and their GPs were not in a position to address the underlying problems: it was not their job, they were not trained for it, and even if they wanted to help, they generally didn't have the necessary knowledge to really help.
There were regular conversations around this subject for the next ten years, sometimes just sharing stories and concerns, and sometimes Paul tried to convince someone that this was a problem they should be addressing.
Some progress was made, supported by reports about the increasing burden being placed on GPs by people in need of non-medical help. Numerous pilot schemes were started, and discussion of the problem crystallised around the name of ‘Social Prescribing’.
Social Prescribing
Social Prescribing is possibly currently the largest scheme which is closely related to what we are aiming to do. A local worker is employed to put people in touch with activities and resources in their area. Several of the links on the Resources page describe aspects of Social Prescribing.
There seems to be a great deal of anecdotal evidence for its success, but little hard published research so far to back this up. There is no doubt that this is partly because collecting hard evidence in this area is extremely difficult to undertake and involves serious moral difficulties – to accurately determine the effect of Social Prescribing, you really need to undertake randomised trials, where some people are provided with support and other people who need it just as much are denied support so their experience can be compared. Sometimes you just have to accept some deficiency in the hard evidence.
