Social Prescribing Innovators Programme
A 6 month pilot programme, enabling 12 project teams or individual social prescribing link workers to innovate against a specific challenge to their service. They received quality improvement training, coaching and support alongside up to 10k funding.
More detail around the 2022/23 programme, activities and projects can be found below.
Impact of the 2022/23 Programme
- You can see some of the fantastic impacts the projects have had in just 6 months here. They are continuing their work innovating and supporting patients and we are working with them to develop their plans for sustainability, and share their impact more widely.
- We are undertaking a qualitative evaluation with UCL to explore the impacts on patients, communities, SP services and the system. A summary of the evaluation is here on slide 4 and you can read the research proposal here.
Sharing the approach with the system
- We are keen to support people to learn from the approach and help develop their own programme or support us in our next iteration!
- To enable this, we held a Showcase event in May to share the approach taken, learnings and the impact so far. See the Showcase event recording here and slides here.
- We are developing a toolkit to share the key elements of our approach and learnings, updates on this will continue to be shared here.
- If you’d like to meet with the team to discuss any learnings from the approach, please email us at: rf-tr.socialprescribing@nhs.net
Our Programme in 2022/23

12 projects from across London formed the first cohort of SP Innovators!
- Project teams included small SP groups working in and collaborating across PCNs, GP practices, LA and VCSE organizations.
- The participants received six months QI training, coaching and support, as well as a share of £120,000 in funding to find innovative solutions to local challenges to SP services.
- Projects addressed challenges around access to SP, recruitment & retention of the workforce and demonstrating impact.
- The programme ran from Sept 22- March 23, and ended with a Graduation Event on 31st March, celebrating successes.
- We are continuing to support participants to ensure their project has sustainability, read how here on slide 7.
Read more information about the programme and projects here:
- Overview of Social Prescribing Innovators Programme
- Social Prescribing Innovators Programme Brochure
- Social Prescribing Innovators Programme Projects
- Next steps for the Social Prescribing Innovators Programme
Documents from the pilot you might find helpful: