Patients and communities driving progress in self care

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.