Understanding the implementation of link workers in primary care
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Understanding the implementation of link workers in primary care: A realist evaluation to inform current and future policy
IRAS ID
294561
Contact name
Stephanie Tierney
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Oxford
Duration of Study in the UK
2 years, 6 months, 1 days
Research summary
Background
Approximately one in five people see their GP with problems that are mainly social (e.g. loneliness), environmental (e.g. housing issues) or economic (e.g. worries about debt) in nature. This is why social prescribing has been introduced into primary care. Social prescribing draws on ‘community assets’ (e.g. local groups, organisations, charities) to assist patients with ‘non-medical’ difficulties.
Link workers are employed to facilitate social prescribing in primary care. Link workers meet with a patient (often more than once) to find out what is happening in that person’s life and what they want to change/address. They then co-produce an action plan, based on the individual’s health and well-being priorities. The action plan concentrates on linking the patient to relevant ‘community assets’.We have reviewed existing literature on link workers to develop guidance on optimising their implementation in primary care. Our review highlighted gaps in knowledge. Therefore, we will carry out some primary research to strengthen our initial recommendations.
Aims
To explore why link workers produce benefits in some settings for some individuals but not for others. We aim to understand and explain how and why link workers produce specific outcomes in certain contexts.Design/methods
We will collect data from 6 primary care sites. We will observe link workers, and conduct qualitative interviews with link workers, health professionals and voluntary-community sector staff. We will examine key documents related to the link worker’s role and data collected routinely by link workers. With patients, we will conduct semi-structured interviews and ask them to complete brief questionnaires - around their initial meeting with a link worker and 9-12 months later (to examine if and how they benefited from seeing a link worker). We will use a research approach called realist evaluation to explain what causes different outcomes from link workers seen in different circumstances.REC name
East of England - Cambridge Central Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
21/EE/0118
Date of REC Opinion
4 May 2021
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion