Nottingham to embed financial link workers into social prescribing

By Emma Bates, Nottingham Financial Resilience Partnership

Nottingham city is about to have Social Prescribing Advice Link Workers within three of its Primary Care Networks.

It has been a long journey for me.  But three things finally came together: an awareness of the idea of the ‘advice on prescription’ idea from years ago; hearing in more recent years of the lack of linkage between primary care and advice services from a local advice service; and then, at the end of 2021, finally hearing of a resource opportunity to bring this idea in to being.

I first became aware of the importance of welfare advice within GP practices many years ago, after watching a TV news story about Professor Brian Jarman who recognised a common link between patient needs at GP surgeries and money problems. He proposed the provision of welfare advice in primary care[i] and there have been several different models developed across the country since then with variations in the links between the welfare advice service and the primary care setting. 

In more recent years, I heard repeatedly from one of our independent welfare advice services about the issues arising from lack of joint working with the local GP surgeries.  

Then, at the end of November 2021 I attended a short online Financial Shield conference, where I heard about models in the London area and also, about the national NHS Additional Roles Reimbursement Scheme funding, which Primary Care Networks can draw down.  Finally, here was a possible opportunity to bring this scheme about in Nottingham city.

The levels of both financial difficulty and poor health in Nottingham are extremely high, evidenced by numerous data sets. The need is clear.

From that conference and follow up discussion with presenters from Bromley by Bow and the National Academy of Social Prescribing, I took the idea forward and approached the ‘Place Based Partnership’ (formerly the Integrated Care Partnership) in the city.

It resulted in two brief presentation opportunities to PCN Network Clinical Directors in February and April. There was a lot of work to do outside of these meetings in the last seven months with multiple stakeholders – the PCNs themselves, welfare advice services, the Placed Based Partnership, the Nottingham City GP Alliance and Public Health - to get everyone on board.  And working out the finances has been both complicated and pivotal to getting buy-in, but we got there!

And here we are, about to start.  Our project will be based on the social prescribing link worker model where workers will be embedded within the PCN and taking their referrals from primary care staff.

I set up and now work for the Nottingham Financial Resilience Partnership – a multi-sector partnership of organisations with a role in either preventing or tackling financial difficulty in the city. I look forward to updating you on our progress. 

[i] Jarman, B. (1985) ‘Giving advice about welfare benefits in general practice’.  British Medical Journal, Clinical Research Ed. 290(6467): 522-4, Feb 16