Social Prescribing
Within the Community Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS) offer, we have a range of Social Prescribers working in various settings.
Currently, we have two Social Prescribing projects, one is working alongside the clinicians of CAMHS Getting More Help Teams, and the other is in a CAMHS Tier 4 hospitals.
Our Social Prescribers connect young people to community offers which will complement the current clinical provision in place. They have brilliant connections with community providers and seek out the best ideas to help develop the interests of young people.
External Evaluation of our Social Prescribing project
We commissioned Research Oxford to evaluate the first year of the social prescribing project in Oxford Health CAMHS Getting Help and Getting More Help.
What is Social Prescribing?
Social Prescribing is about supporting young people to link back into the community, alongside their clinical support.
This could be through connecting the young person to a football club, supporting them to access a local youth club, linking them to other charities that offer alternative education or helping to reignite their lost interests.
Holistic approaches to mental health put the person at the centre of their treatment. This method addresses the young person's emotional, mental and physical needs and allows them to create value and connection with the community around them.
How To Access
To access the Social Prescribing offer young people will need to already be receiving support from CAMHS.
You can contact the SPA team or visit the CAMHS SPA website to learn more about how to do this.
Single Point of Access
The Single Point of Access (SPA) in CAMHS is the place where all referrals for mental health support in the county come for triage and placing with the right team for the need.
Not all referrals into CAMHS meet the threshold of need. The new SPA Social Prescriber from Response is aimed at supporting cases which may not meet the threshold for need at the time of referral but signposting parents and carers to other appropriate and helpful support within the wider community. The worker will bring the expertise in Response for social prescribing and community connectivity.
How to access support: When referrals are made into the SPA, the Response social prescriber will be allocated appropriate cases to work with.
Specialist Youth Workers
The aim of this project is to support young people with the most acute mental health needs in hospitals through social prescribing methods. If young people are placed in a Tier 4 hospital unit, they are often at a stage with their mental health where specialist treatment is needed because they are at risk of becoming very unwell.
