Why does ‘place’ matter for social prescribing?
/This article was featured in the SCDC Weekly - 15th October
A new article has explored social prescribing and the policies and funding decisions which affect voluntary and community services.
Published by Emilie McSwiggan, PhD student at the University of Edinburgh, the article explores the role social prescribing can play in supporting good health and wellbeing by connecting people to community groups and resources that can help to meet our physical and mental health needs.
But what happens to social prescribing if community resources are limited or unavailable in the places we live? This is a key question as voluntary and public sector services face funding cuts, forcing some to close and others to scale back their projects.
This is also not an equal problem. Past research has shown that communities affected by poverty, already impacted by unfair and avoidable inequalities, have fewer community resources to begin with, and also tend to bear the brunt of funding cuts to the voluntary and community sector.
"For people like me, who study social prescribing," Emilie explains, "these differences between places are important to explore. We need to understand how this might affect the way social prescribing is provided, and people’s ability to receive and benefit from it."
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