PEER SUPPORT

Biweekly, OPEN DROP IN sessions.
Every other week - see dates on Eventbrite 
Next sessions: Tuesday 10th & 24th August: 4.00pm - 5.30pm
Sign up via Eventbrite

This is an open, informal session, where all can offload, discuss the challenges posed by their work and how they are feeling. Whilst practical solutions may be discussed, this is very much a session to grab a coffee, come and 'breathe out'!  Attend as many as you like.
 

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SP Service Managers peer support 
Next session: Wednesday 18th August: 4.00pm - 5.30pm
Sign up via Eventbrite
These run every 6 weeks and will be a blend of updates and news from NHSE and your local systems, and smaller group work discussing prevalent challenges coming up in your work.  It is a great opportunity to meet other managers and get in touch with the broader context of your work.  

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PEER LEARNING

Next session: 25th August 2021: 12:30pm - 2pm
Supporting migrant communities and people with refugee status. 
Sign up via Eventbrite

What social prescribing approaches exist in the UK for migrant populations? Do they improve migrants’ health and wellbeing? What should we be doing to facilitate successful social prescribing for migrants, and how can we better measure the outcomes?

• Public Health England conducted a recent evidence review of social prescribing approaches and outcomes for migrant populations in the UK.
• Findings from the evidence review were used to create a new social prescribing page for the Migrant Health Guide on GOV.UK, which contains recommendations for social prescribing link workers, commissioners, service managers, service evaluators and researchers.
• Alongside this, the Greater London Authority commissioned Doctors of the World UK to produce a toolkit for link workers to assist migrants to access healthcare.

Join this webinar to participate in the launch of the Migrant Health Guide social prescribing page. You’ll also learn about the findings of Public Health England’s evidence review, hear about social prescribing link workers’ experiences working with vulnerable migrant groups, and find out more about resources that can support your work with migrants.

Open to all SPLWs & managers, expect your peers to be presenting on best practice (this section will be recorded), discussion and problem solving.

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Peer Learning for London: Outcome measures and presenting the impact of your work (recording).

Feel free to watch our latest Peer Learning session recording and access the presentation to get all information related to measuring outcomes and presenting the impact of the Social Prescribing work you do.

PowerPoint presentation available here.
Resources available via London Social Prescribing Toolkit.

We are working to create a bank of social prescribing case studies looking at specific examples of innovation and best practice, so we can share the wonderful work you are pioneering in your localities, with the wider social prescribing network. Do you have something you think we could showcase?  To submit the bullet points of a suggestion - please drop some basic details into this quick form. 
 

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11/08/2021, 1:00-2:15pm and 24/08/2021, 3:00-4:15pm.
Public Participation and System Transformation webinar programme. An introduction to people and communities. Sign up here.
These webinars are about working with people and communities and are part of the learning and development offer from the Public Participation team, aimed at colleagues working in an NHS organisation and those supporting an NHS organisation in its engagement activity. Other colleagues working across the public and voluntary sectors may find these sessions beneficial and are welcome to attend.

Purpose of the webinars
We work with colleagues across the organisation, health and care, and the voluntary sector, to spread participation best practice and ensure that we fulfil our legal duties to involve patients and the public. The series of webinars will help you to:

COVID-19 has had a disproportionate impact on specific groups and highlighted that we need to work with people and communities to address health inequalities.

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Mental Health First Aid - Free online course accredited by NCFE CACHE – Qualify in 3 weeks.
Get trained and qualified in Mental Health First Aid for free. As a trained First Aider, you will be able to identify, understand and respond to signs of mental illnesses.
Apply here or email Olivia Sykes (oliviasykes@freecoursesinengland.co.uk) including your Name and Surname, Postcode and Telephone number. If you decide to apply via email please use "London Social Prescribing Newsletter" in the email subject.

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In what ways can museums, gardens and libraries be good for our health? Exploring how social prescribing within cultural spaces can support older people’s wellbeing. Sign up here.
Join us as we launch our latest research findings on how cultural spaces can support the health and wellbeing of older people. 
The findings have been developed by a project team from the University of Oxford, University College London (UCL) and the University of Plymouth, in collaboration with older people, national and international cultural organisations, researchers and social prescribers.
Information about the project can be found on Oxford Social Prescribing Research Network’s website.

The third UK Annual Social Prescribing Link Worker (SPLW) Day will take place on 8 October 2021, showcasing the impact and role of SPLWs in creatively disrupting inequalities and powering up integrated care. A conference will take place on the same day. On 7 October 2021, an awards ceremony will celebrate and recognise all those SPLWs who have made outstanding contributions.

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More upcoming events available here.

Times are universally tough right now, and you are all holding a lot.  For those that feel they might be in need of support themselves, it may be useful to be aware that your local IAPT service may be prioritising support for healthcare workers.  If you are NHS funded, look through this list of services they have made available for free.

Please also see below some other ways you can access help for yourself:

Join any of our London-wide biweekly, OPEN DROP IN sessions, a place for SPLWs to come and off load.

Carers, young carers and Universal Personalised Care
The aim of this guidance is to support systems to understand how each of the six components of Universal Personalised Care can be used to support unpaid carers. It shows how personalised care approaches can support delivery of the NHS Long Term Plan commitments for carers and enable carers to access more targeted support to help them to manage their own health and wellbeing. Section related to Social Prescribing - page 12.

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Understanding integration: how to listen to and learn from people and communities.
Over the past year, Picker and The King’s Fund have been working with NHS England and NHS Improvement on how ICSs can listen to and learn from people and communities. They have produced a practical guide for partners working in these systems, with ideas on how they might go about this. The guide has been developed with input from ICSs, patient leaders, and engagement and experience experts. Download here.

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London Plus Newsletter
Monthly news, views, insights and opportunities around London. Subscribe or see past issues available here.

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Ockham Healthcare Newsletter
Ockham Healthcare is a think tank and consultancy. They identify, promote and support best practise and new ways of working in General Practice. Access their Newsletter to listen to a podcast on the provision of Social Prescribers in Primary Care.

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Dementia Change Action Network
DCAN (Dementia Change Action Network) have published the Next Steps website to support people who are waiting for a memory assessment appointment. 

Registration refusal

The Bureau for Investigative Journalism report revealed that most GP surgeries refuse to register undocumented migrants despite NHS policy, and many could not provide accurate information to support enquiring patients to access the CV-19 vaccine. 
Less than a quarter of practices approached agreed to register a patient without documentation.

• The Bureau contacted around a third of GP practices in 10 locations with large populations of people born outside the UK: Newham and Brent in London, Manchester, Birmingham, Coventry, Leicester, Slough, Luton, Cardiff and Glasgow. We asked about registering a hypothetical patient: “Rosa”, a woman in her 40s without ID or proof of address.
• Less than a quarter of GP surgeries (24%) surveyed in cities across England, Scotland and Wales would register someone without proof of address, proof of ID or legal immigration status.
• Almost two-thirds (62%) told us they would not register the patient, while the remaining 14% said they were unsure whether they could.
• Luton was the least accommodating; none of the surgeries we spoke to agreed to register our patient. In Brent, 12 out of 15 surgeries said they would not register our patient

Impact on access to the vaccine

• In just over half of all calls, we were able to ask surgeries if they could suggest alternative vaccination options. The most common response, given more than a third of the time, was that they did not know.
• One in six surgeries told us our patient would not be eligible for the vaccine because they lacked either an NHS number or immigration status. None of the surgeries that refused to register “Rosa” offered her the opportunity to be vaccinated as an unregistered patient, which is a clear option in Public Health England guidance.

Please access animated resources from DOTW on GP registration and vaccine access – available here: How to Register with a GP and Book a Vaccine - Doctors of the World. The short animation is available in 12 languages. Please do share these animations with your networks.

This research has also helped to inform the GLA-funded London Funder strategy for resourcing immigration advice work. This research and funder strategy will be of relevance to those of you working on areas such as housing and homelessness, equalities, social prescribing and wider social welfare advice needs. 

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Please continue to follow us on Twitter: London Social Prescribing  @SP_LDN and use #LondonSocialPrescribing to let us know about your Social Prescribing schemes/projects in London!

Utilising your Personalised Care ARRS roles effectively (London) Webinar
As the teams of Social Prescribing Link Workers, Health and Well Being Coaches and Care Co-ordinators are growing in primary care, it is helpful to think through the roles and how they might work best together. The webinar focuses on the three personalised care practitioner roles, look at how they are being utilised in practice and share tips on how you might implement them in your own PCN.

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Social Prescribing Patient Stories

Recommendations
Would you like to share an inspiring book, film, poem, music or another piece of art?
Feel free to submit it here so other Colleagues could enjoy it too!

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Knowing Where to Look: 108 Daily Doses of Inspiration
"A collection of stories, essays, and exercises to spark your creative instincts, activate your inner guidance, and enliven your dreams

Have you been called to express yourself with a level of courage and honesty that surprised even you? Did an image or moment cause you such joy that you needed to share it with the world? If so, you know what it means to be inspired.

World-renowned spiritual teacher Light Watkins has spent most of his life learning how to seek out and tap into sources of inspiration. "Inspiration is part inner guidance, part blind faith in a greater possibility, and part inner voice," he writes, "nudging you to take an action that helps you grow and expand your awareness." In Knowing Where to Look, Light presents a trove of compelling inspirational material to catalyze positive change and give you fuel to push through self-limiting beliefs."

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The gift and power of emotional courage by Susan David
Harvard Medical School psychologist Susan David studies emotional agility: the psychology of how we can use emotion to bring forward our best selves in all aspects of how we love, live, parent and lead. David holds a PhD in the psychology of emotions, is an award-winning Harvard Medical School psychologist, and is ranked as one of the world's leading management thinkers. Her #1 Wall Street Journal bestselling book, Emotional Agility, describes the psychological skills critical to thriving in times of complexity and change. Join over 150,000 quiz takers and get your free Emotional Agility report. Test yourself here. Source:https://www.ted.com/speakers/susan_david.

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Podcast on Prescription
Join Dr Radha Modgil, GP, broadcaster, author and Social Prescribing Ambassador, as she discusses the power of social prescribing with a special guest each week, through a brand new podcast: Podcast on Prescription.

A QUOTE TO NOTE