Evaluation of Salford Health Matters Social Prescribing Project
Started January 2009 - to be completed December 2009
Social prescription is a mechanism for linking patients in primary care with non-medical support in the community. Salford Health Matters (SHM) started providing a social prescribing project (‘Refresh’) in the late summer of 2008. Later in the year, Acton Shapiro was commissioned by SHM to evaluate whether the project is meeting its objectives in addressing issues such as poor mental health, social isolation and work-limiting illnesses within its population.
There are two phases to the evaluation:
- The first phase, which runs from January to March, involves an e-survey and follow-up telephone interviews to gather the views of referrers, an analysis of the database set up to gather demographic and health data from patients participating in the programme and short face-to-face interviews with patients at a drop-in session in order to find out what they think about the service and whether it is meeting their needs.
- The second phase, which will run from September to November, will broadly repeat the data collection methods used in phase one but, in addition, a discussion group with staff involved in the project will be held. Running concurrently with the two phases of the project is an analysis of the sustainability of the social prescribing initiative in relation to the NHS Performance Agenda and Primary Care’s Quality and Outcomes Framework (QOF).
Two reports will be produced from the work - an interim report in April and a final report in December. |
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