Wellbeing While Waiting V1.0

• Research type

  Research Study

• Full title

  Wellbeing While Waiting: Evaluating Social prescribing in CAMHS

• IRAS ID

  315240

• Contact name

  Daisy Fancourt

• Contact email

  d.fancourt@ucl.ac.uk

• Sponsor organisation

  UCL

• Duration of Study in the UK

  1 years, 10 months, 31 days

• Research summary

  The Wellbeing While Waiting study seeks to evaluate a new social prescribing pathway that has already been co-developed and is currently being implemented by the Social Prescribing Youth Network (SPYN) and Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHSs) for children and young people (CYP) on waiting lists for treatment.

  Social Prescribing is a mechanism of connecting patients to non-medical forms of support within the community such as arts and cultural programmes, social groups, nature interventions and volunteering schemes. Typically, a health or social care professional refers a patient to a Link Worker (LW) or social prescriber, who works with the patient to identify suitable community activities they could enjoy and benefit from. Social prescribing has been used since the 1980s in the UK and was formally launched as a national programme by NHS England in 2018. But its usage in CAMHS has only begun to grow in the last few years.

  The SPYN social prescribing pathway is one example of social prescribing being implemented within CAMHS at the moment. It is currently being rolled out across selected CAMHS in England. But it is important to ascertain if it has benefits for patients and CAMHS. So, working with up to 10 sites across England who are providing the SPYN social prescribing pathway, the study will:

  1. Examine whether the new social prescribing pathway:

  i) Impacts on the mental health, wellbeing and social experiences of CYP
  ii) Impacts on service-level outcomes

  2. Assess factors which influence the implementation of the pathway within CAMHS

  Findings from Wellbeing While Waiting will be widely shared via various channels (e.g. journal articles, evidence briefings) to key policy, practice and research stakeholders. The findings could support the work of dozens of CAMHS nationally who are piloting similar schemes or looking to copy the SPYN programme.
  

• REC name

  West of Scotland REC 5

• REC reference

  22/WS/0184

• Date of REC Opinion

  17 Jan 2023

• REC opinion

  Further Information Favourable Opinion