Social Prescriber

We have an exciting opportunity for 2 full-time Social Prescribers to join the team in the Porter Valley Primary Care Network.

Social prescribing empowers people to take control of their health and wellbeingthrough referral to non-clinical social prescribing link workers.

They give people time to focus on what matters to me and take a holistic approach to an individuals health and wellbeing.

Social Prescribers will:

• Take a whole population approach, working with a rangeof people who may benefit from social prescribing, including people who arelonely, have complex social needs, low level mental health needs and long-term conditions.
• Take a proactive approach to identifying patients whowould benefit from H&WB support, as well as support those referred from clinicians within the network.
• Help people to co-produce a simple personalised careand support plan, based on their wider health and wellbeing needs including financial stress, poor housing, physical inactivity, social isolation and low-level mental health.
• Support people by connecting them to non-medical, community-based activities, groupsand services that meet their practical, social and emotional needs, including specialist advice services and arts and culture, physical activity, and natureand green based activities
• Use coaching and motivational interviewing techniques you will listen, empower and motivate people to take control of their own health and wellbeing
• Support development of accessible and sustainable community offers by working in partnership with VCSE organisations, local authorities and others to identify gaps in provision, and take a community development approach to enabling growthin community activities and groups.

Primary Care Sheffield (PCS) is a GP-led organisation. Our shareholders are 75 GP practices in Sheffield covering over 600,000 patients.

Key Responsibilities:

• Take referrals from the PCNs Core Network Practices, working towards developing a possible route of referral for external agencies, including pharmacies, health and care multi-disciplinary teams (MDTs), VCSE organisations, and through self-referrals (list not exhaustive)
• Provide personalised support to individuals, their families and carers to access community-based activities and support that can help them to take control of their health and wellbeing through co-producing a simple personalised care and support plan and introducing people to appropriate activities, groups and services as described above
• Build ongoing relationships with local infrastructure organisations, community activities and support services to increase knowledge of the community support offer, and work collaboratively to develop effective partnership working to support the community offer to be sustainable, identifying gaps in provision, nurturing community assets and sharing intelligence on gaps or problems with commissioners and local authorities
• Educate non-clinical and clinical staff within PCN MDTs on the community support offer, how and when patients can access it, and the value of non-medical community-based interventions. This may include verbal or written advice and guidance.
• Promote social prescribing as an approach across the PCN and wider agencies, including its role in supported self-management, in addressing health inequalities and the wider determinants of health, reducing pressure on statutory services, improving access to healthcare and improving health outcomes, and in taking a holistic approach to care.

Referrals:

• Proactively develop strong links with local agencies to encourage appropriate referrals.
• Provide referral agencies with regular updates about social prescribing, including training for their staff and how to access information to encourage appropriate referrals.
• Seek regular feedback about the quality of service and impact of social prescribing onpatient and referral agencies.
• Proactively encourage equitable participation in social prescribing through taking self-referrals and connecting with diverse local communities through a range of methods, particularly communities that statutory agencies may find hard to reach and where health inequalities are most prevalent.
• Build trust and respect with the person and their families if appropriate, providing non-judgemental and non-discriminatory support, taking a strength-based approach that focuses on a persons assets.
• 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 individuals to co-produce a simple personalised support plan to address the persons health and wellbeing needs based on the persons priorities, interests, values, cultural and religious/faith needs and motivations
• Provide information on what people can from the groups, activities and services they are being connected to
• Provide information on what the person can do for themselves to improve their health and wellbeing
• Physically…