Celebrating Social Prescribing Day: How Care Navigators are supporting our community

Care Navigation/Social Prescribing is a model that enables health and social care professionals to refer people to a range of non-medical services within their community to improve and support social, mental and physical health and wellbeing.

Recognising that people’s health and wellbeing is affected by a range of social, economic, and environmental factors.

Care Navigation takes a holistic approach that enables people to take control of their own health. With the practical and emotional support of a Care Navigator this allows people to identify ways to improve how they are feeling.

How does it work?

Our Care Navigators spend time helping people to focus on ‘what matters’ to them. They assess the needs of each individual and together create a personalised care and support plan. This may involve connecting them to community groups, classes, workshops, or even advisory bodies for legal advice or debt counselling.

Care Navigating success

There is increasing evidence in the success of Care Navigating/Social Prescribing and the impact it has on both individuals and communities.

“In one evaluation, six care navigators from voluntary care organisations worked in integrated health and social care teams across and county. They carried out up to six face to face interviews with an older person, with a unit cost of £42 (compared to £213 per visit for adult social worker). Health related quality of life measures improved by 17%, people needed to use fewer health services and the project was overall cost effective.” ~ Care Navigation: A Competency Framework

“Thank you so much, you’ve helped me to realise there are resources out there for me” – Patient was experiencing homelessness

Is there a difference between Care Navigators and Social Prescribers?

There is no universal definition of care navigation a variety of titles are used, including ‘care navigator (CN)’, ‘social prescriber (SP)’ and ‘link worker’. All these roles provide effective navigation and is a key element of delivering coordinated, person-centred care and support.

Care Navigators are often existing members of staff within Community Services and GP practices. At Sussex MSK Health, our Care Navigators work closely with clinicians, which helps to free up valuable clinical time for addressing physical health needs, while Care Navigators can focusing on non-medical and wellbeing concerns. By providing this additional support patients receive holistic care that extends beyond clinical treatment.

Why have Care Navigators as part of our MSK service?

• Help and support with barriers to appointments.
• Liaise with clinicians/admin teams/clinical teams.
• A chance for patients to unpack, reflect and think about their next steps.
• Help people in multiple pathways within MSK and help make sense of their treatment plans.
• Help stop people falling through the cracks and bouncing in and out of the service.
• There are incredible resources out in the community – directing people more quickly to these can benefit the person.

Many things affect our health and wellbeing. We can all sometimes feel isolated, lonely, or stressed out by work or money. It can also be very difficult dealing with the stress of managing a long-term condition.

We now have a team of 8 people who are helping patients deal with similar concerns every day, creating personalised support plans for our patients giving them access the support and resources they need to help them feel better.

Read more about Personalised Care/ Social Prescribing on the NHS website: NHS England » Social prescribing

Or if you’d like to learn more about our MSK service you can find out more here: Community MSK Services in Sussex – Here