Social Prescribing Day 2025: Project helps increase people’s confidence attending appointments

Today (19 March 2025) is Social Prescribing Day: an annual celebration of the people, organisations and communities who make social prescribing happen.

So what is social prescribing? It is an approach that connects people to activities, groups and services in their community to meet the practical, social and emotional needs that affect their health and wellbeing.

In Wakefield District, the social wellbeing service Live Well Wakefield is delivered collaboratively between Nova Wakefield District and South West Yorkshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust. One of Live Well Wakefield’s recent pieces of work was the appointment support project.

Live Well Wakefield worked with two community anchors at St Mary’s Community Centre in Pontefract and Eastmoor Community Project to support adult residents with a history of missed appointments and low engagement.

The residents self-designed action plans and were provided with practical support to reduce barriers to attending physical and mental health appointments.

Examples of the support provided included having waiting room company to reduce anxiety, appointment prompts for those with memory issues and bus route planning and physical support to travel to create access options.

The project built confidence and independent life and self-advocacy skills for future independent access, whilst addressing the cause of inequalities through social prescribing.

Service users also had access to a Live Well Wakefield social prescribing advisor to help them to explore their wider social needs, working together to address both cause and impact, through connections to an array of local support options and activities.

The main outcomes from the project were that:

• Service users successfully attended 98.9 per cent of their appointments.
• 100 per cent had ‘little’ to ‘no’ confidence attending appointments pre-support, with 80 per cent reporting ‘high’ to ‘complete’ confidence post-support.
• 80 per cent reported health and wellbeing improvements initially post support, raising to 100 per cent post-three months.

With a health and care system in demand, this project successfully reduced the number of vital missed appointments and reduced need via earlier access.

One of the service users who took part said:

“I no longer need to walk with a stick, much more positive things have happened in my life now that I go to appointments.

“I have been accepted for detox and rehab which I never would have been able to do before without help, I never would have waited in the waiting room or would have turned back home before I even got there.”

As well as the appointment support project there are local support options and activities, including those from Voluntary, Community and Social Enterprise organisations, working across the district. More information can be found on Nova’s website.