Social Prescribing for Children and Young People in A&E

April 23rd, 2024

To mark the closure of our Nottinghamshire services, this week we are highlighting just how much our programmes have achieved in Nottingham and celebrating the difference this work has made.

Our Nottingham A&E Social Prescribing pilot has had a huge impact on hundreds of children and young people. Read on to find out how and sign up to receive our full report later this year.

With hospitals struggling with long A&E waiting times, preventing re-attendance is absolutely crucial. Embedding social prescribing in A&E departments to reduce underlying or social problems impacting overall health can play an important role in achieving this.  Our Nottingham Children and Young People Social Prescribing pilot set out to do  precisely that. 

From June 2022 to September 2023, Redthread set up and successfully delivered a pioneering A&E based Social Prescribing service for 11-25 year olds at the Queen’s Medical Centre. It was designed to meet the needs of young patients in the Emergency Department who presented with social issues around, for instance, emotional wellbeing, bullying, social care, safeguarding, substance use or housing.

Commissioned by the NHS Nottingham and Nottinghamshire Integrated Care Board and working in a larger partnership with Age UK Nottingham and Nottinghamshire and Framework, the Social Prescribing Service aimed to improve health and wellbeing among patients, promote health equality, reduce A&E re-attendance, support patients to register with GPs and reduce the workload of clinical staff.

The pilot was very effective in terms of meeting high demand, engagement and linking children and young people in with longer term community support: 

• 93% accepted support following referral to our Social Prescribing Link Worker
• 448 children and young people supported
• 86% linked in with relevant community services

Our internal evaluation of the Social Prescribing pilot shows that this A&E based provision had an overwhelmingly positive impact on children and young people. Young people attending the hospital with mental health problems especially benefited from the service. 

Our full evaluation of the Social Prescribing service will be available later this spring.  To be the first to hear and receive a copy of the report, please sign up here.