danielle.wood

Tim Anfilogoff, Head of Community Resilience for Herts Valleys CCG gives his reflections on Social Prescribing and Covid-19 in West Hertfordshire. In 2014, Herts Valleys CCG, in partnership with Herts County Council, commissioned four voluntary organisations to provide six community navigators.  This service was built on HertsHelp  which is a county-wide single point of access for expert triage to 12,000 entries on the community database.    The navigators soon showed the difference they could make ‘getting alongside’ people who needed - but would never ring – HertsHelp.  The service was expanded into the countywide Hospital and Community Navigator Service [...]

Alistair Clarke, MBE FRSA is chair of Social Enterprise Solutions writes about what it's like working in a social prescribing project during COVID 19. “I can’t use a computer. My husband could, but he died last November.” I’m on the phone to a woman in Blackpool in her 70s and I’m working on a social prescribing project in partnership with a number of GPs’ surgeries. I’m checking on her wellbeing, that she can access food and medication, and in that moment, I sensed how the harsh reality of recently losing a loved one combined with the Covid-19 lockdown had [...]