Commissioned by the Mayor of London

The GLA engaged with many VCSE organisations in developing Next Steps to Social Prescribing. Through this engagement several themes arose relating to what would be valuable to support and enable the VCSE sector to engage better with commissioners and other key stakeholders in order to deliver social prescribing more effectively, these included:

• Improving opportunities for networking and sharing good practice opportunities, or keeping up to date on policy developments – the development of a VCSE network is the subject of a separate GLA procurement;
• Improving understanding of both the commissioner’s and service provider’s perspective of how local schemes are developed and delivered;
• Improving knowledge and support regarding safeguarding and how to ensure and support appropriate referrals;
• Ensuring link-worker support and training covers information about how to engage with the VCSE sector including increasing understanding of how the sector works including specific communities of interest groups and sector specific areas;
• Building the capacity of the VCSE to deliver services including leadership training, capacity building and partnership building;
• Jointly developing the Mayor’s role in facilitating better partnership working and funding opportunities.

This project sought to respond to this and develop resources of value to the VCSE in delivering social prescribing in London.

For more information on social prescribing in London please visit London Plus or Transformation Partners in Health & Care’s dedicated pages.