The rising cost of living and other social challenges are making life harder for many Australians. Support programs are scattered and poorly connected, making it tough for people to find and access the services they need – so many people are turning to health professionals for help with social issues.
The problem is that these health professionals aren’t equipped to handle such specific demands, which results in them suffering increased stress, burnout and compassion fatigue.
To improve this situation, social prescribing – a service model that links people to relevant social and community care services – aims to facilitate an individual’s complex social needs and ensure they get connected to appropriate services.
“Social prescribing involves screening for social needs during healthcare appointments and then making referrals to the right social and community services – but the various services currently exist in separate silos, they function independently of each other and lack the mechanisms to understand what each other do,” explains Dr Candice Oster, from Flinders University’s Caring Futures Institute.
“Social prescribing, a concept that has been around for quite a while in the UK, is being seen as something that should be embedded in Australia’s health and social care systems, so we have to work closely with communities and industry partners to co-design a social prescribing model that fits into Australia’s national, state and local systems.”
Flinders researchers from the Caring Futures Institute and Centre for Social Impact (Professor Svetlana Bogomolova, Dr Oster, Dr Ashleigh Powell, Dr Claire Hutchinson and Dr Sahar Faghidno) are collaborating with nine partners – the Department of Human Services, Anglicare SA, Adelaide Primary Health Network, City of Onkaparinga, Corporation of the City of Marion, Semantic Consulting, MarionLIFE, Uniting Communities and Baptist Care – in a project to co-design a social prescribing model for South Australia.
With the support of a recent $650,000 ARC Linkage grant, the project – titled ‘Social Prescribing: Linking Australian social, health and community sectors’ – will use technology to help establish a crucial referral pathway that efficiently addresses social determinants of health.
Over three years, it aims to identify shortcomings and disconnections within the current network of social support services, implement an improved network and raise awareness of how to make good connections with help services, then evaluate the effectiveness of the new system.
Work has commenced on the first phase, to understand what current social supports are being offered by different providers and their degree of connection, and to catalogue the assessment of both health professions and clients towards the current networks – which will inform the creation of a fresh co-designed solution.
“Importantly, we won’t be introducing a new program, which could make the fragmentation between services and clients even worse, but instead we will work with the existing Community Connections Program that is delivered by the Department of Human Services,” says Dr Oster.
Such a model can then provide a pathway from healthcare to social and community supports through referrals to relevant services – ultimately addressing the underlying issues affecting poor social and economic wellbeing for some people and communities.
“Our expected outcomes are a new social prescribing model and referral tools fit for Australian use, to enable more efficient, effective and connected social, health and community services – and a strong social marketing aspect to this project to explain the benefits of social prescribing will ensure the research connects and is effective,” says Dr Oster.
“We’ve found there is currently a lack of understanding about how important social determinants are to people’s health and wellbeing, so this research can change this situation for the better.”