This briefing reports on the Building Health Partnerships Self Care programme and the seven areas where it operated in 2017-2018. The key message is that by building health partnerships between the statutory sector and local communities, we can:
- Improve access to existing community-centred approaches
- Test new approaches to workforce development
- Define outcomes and the ‘difference made’ by community approaches to health
- Co-design, co-direct and co-produce services to deliver a health and care system that works for local people
- Begin to address financial and contractual barriers to effective and sustainable community-centred approaches and social prescribing
- Empower communities to set up new initiatives
- Create a shared vision of social prescribing and the ‘infrastructure’ needed to support community-centred approaches
- Build partnerships and foundations for more cross-sector working.
In this briefing, you will find examples that illustrate how each of these was achieved and the difference made in communities.
