DEMENTIA
Examining Social Prescribing
Paul Edwards, Director of Clinical Services at Dementia UK, discusses the proposals for social prescribing within the NHS Long-Term Plan and what this could mean for dementia care.
The NHS Long-Term Plan has laid down its hopes for the future of healthcare, and, more specifically, dementia care. One of these hopes is to have over 900,000 individuals accessing social prescribing schemes, with 1000 social prescribing link workers being trained to allow this to happen. Put simply, social prescribing allows GPs to refer patients to community sources of support to improve their health and wellbeing. However, we need to ask ourselves how and, indeed, if it can support people with dementia and their families in the long- term, and perhaps even help prevent the condition.
Social prescribing has so much potential to improve the health of people with long-term conditions. In cases of dementia, families are facing increased isolation which can lead to anxiety, loneliness and depression, for example. Timely interventions through community support could be the route to preventing things like carer’s stress, and could even give carers the boost of strength to allow them to continue in their demanding roles. Helping people to stay connected to the community has also been proven to help prevent or at least delay the onset of dementia. However, even if someone is diagnosed with dementia, social prescribing can be a powerful tool for reminiscing and providing emotional connections.
In dementia care, there is no one-size-fits-all solution. The condition affects each and every family in different ways. This is why we welcome social prescribing as an acknowledgement that individuals are diverse. However, it must be recognised that a joined-up approach is needed so that families can ensure that their health and social care needs are adequately catered for.
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This segues nicely into what impact social prescribing will have on the NHS. By focusing more on social services, we could remove some of the pressures on the healthcare service. Social prescribing ultimately gives people stronger community ties, improved physical fitness and better quality of life, thereby reducing the chance of hospital admissions.
Our specialist dementia Admiral Nurses already use many of the tenets of social prescribing. They help to provide links between families facing dementia and the wider community, for example through dementia support groups. They are already supporting many healthcare professionals across a number of care settings to provide families with dementia with the best care possible. As they bridge the gap between health and social care so expertly, there is much to be said about how Admiral Nursing can ensure the longevity of the social prescribing model.
However, the government and wider society needs more than just aspiration to alleviate long-term health conditions like dementia. These proposals need to have the proper resources put behind them so that the government can deflect any accusations of social prescribing being tokenistic, or the belief that it is just a ‘nice-to-have’. Similarly, we need social prescribing to work in tandem to expert post-diagnostic clinical care. We are expecting the lines to be more clearly drawn out in the consistently delayed social care Green Paper. Aſter all, we need people with dementia to still feel and actually be a part of a community; social prescribing can and should be a key way for us as a society to do this.
www.dementiauk.org www.tomorrowscare.co.uk
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