South Cheshire & Vale Royal GP Alliance have developed a Primary Care Social Prescribing Service as part of the original Prime Ministers Challenge Fund. The ‘Alternative Solutions’ service has been running this service for over three years and the results are very positive.

Social Prescribing is seen as one of the most important 10 High Impact Changes, therefore we have been working with the local Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) to agree how we can ensure that the service continues.

We are pleased to report that the CCG have now agreed to support the maintenance of the service with the Alliance agreeing to continue to fund the service until the end of March 2019. After March, the CCG will pick up the funding pending a review of the service, in particular looking at how ‘Alternative Solutions’ can integrate with other social prescribing initiatives.

The big advantage of our Social Prescribing initiative, over others around, is that ‘Alternative Solutions’ is totally primary care facing, taking referrals from practices to help to address the social determinants of ill-health.

Download the Alternative Solutions – South Cheshire and Vale Royal Social Prescribing Programme presentation

For further information please contact Lisa Taylor, lisa@howbeckhealthcare.co.uk