Care Navigation and social prescribing

Care navigation and social prescribing services are about using community-based services, alongside traditional statutory health and social care services to help improve health and wellbeing. Local non-clinical social prescribing services support people to make positive choices to promote good health and emotional well-being and can often provide a practical option that can support existing medical treatments for patients. The preventative interventions put in place by social prescribing services help provide support to residents earlier, helping to reduce and delay the need for costly interventions. Nationally, social prescribing models have been promoted and the NHS Five Year Forward View (FYFV) has highlighted the benefits of social prescribing and care navigation services, evidencing reductions in visits to accident and emergency, out-patient appointments and hospital admissions. A number of care navigation pilots across the country have evidenced positive outcomes including:

• Significant reduction in psychological distress and mental health problems
• Reductions in GP consultations and prescribed medication
• Increase in patient confidence in managing their long-term conditions (LTC)
• Reductions in readmissions for stroke
• Inpatient, A&E and outpatient attendances reduced by 20-21% and
• Hospital admissions decrease by 72%. One area reported an estimated £1,365 cost saving per patient. It is clear from the evidence highlighted that having an enhanced care navigation service will enable people with LTCs to achieve a better quality of life and provide value for money for both NHS and Social Care services. Local Context - The current Joint Strategic Needs Assessment describes the current and future health and wellbeing needs of Camden’s local population, including older people and people of a working age. Older people are the fastest growing age group in Camden. Despite high average life expectancy, people over 65 face an excessive burden of poverty, isolation and caring responsibilities. Services that help face these health issues, tackle social isolation, and help maintain independent lives are essential to this growing population group. There are currently almost 28,000 people over 65 in Camden and this number is expected to increase to approximately 35,000 in the next ten years (25% increase). Older people are more likely to live in social housing than any other age group; a quarter of older people live in poverty and over 40% live alone. More than half of all older people are overweight or obese; almost half (44%) have two or more long-term conditions, the most common of which is diabetes (17%). NHS Outcome Framework Domains & Indicators - The key outcomes of the services are to:
• Decrease the use of unplanned acute services by increasing the access of hard to reach, marginalised, and BME communities to mainstream non-acute services by strengthening the delivery of health promotion, prevention and the wider determinants of health.
• Increase the awareness of ‘hard to reach’, ‘marginalised’, and BME communities on the delivery of health promotion and prevention interventions.
• Increase in the number of people identified and supported to manage long-term conditions.
• Increase people’s ability to live independently in the community.
• Decrease in the number of avoidable emergency admissions to hospital and decrease in accessing primary care.
• Deliver a service aligned to the principles of the strengths based approach.
• Increase collaborative working across the health, local authority and community and voluntary sector with consequent reduction in costs. The contract will be signed once the standstill period has terminated, for the period from 01/04/25 to 31/03/26.