Thriving Together’s online social prescribing platform boosts referrals across Northumberland

Author: Tom Robinson
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Thriving Together provides support to Voluntary, Community and Social Enterprise (VCSE) organisations on behalf of Northumberland County Council.  Covering a wide and varied geography, their aim is to support VCSE organisations to thrive and achieve their potential.  They support collaborative partnership working, provide training and governance support, strengthen the sector and take an inclusive approach, offering non-membership support to all VCSE organisations throughout Northumberland.

A group of around 50 people stand together in the bar area of Morpeth rugby club. People are dressed professionally, some with lanyards and some with T-shirts related to their projects.

Supporting social prescribing is an important part of their role and one of the key elements of this support is the Frontline referral platform – an online resource which provides information about VCSE opportunities, projects, groups and events. The platform is accessible by the public, social prescribing link workers (and those in similar roles) and VCSE organisations.  This platform, which is free to use and has been running for around two years, has been very successful in supporting social prescribing activity.  In the three months from April to June 2024, the site received 182 referrals from Social Prescribing Link Workers and made 180 signposts.  Frontline is funded by North East and North Cumbria ICB and Northumberland County Council with Thriving Together signposting organisations to the service.

Helen Andrews, a Community Connector at Thriving Together, works to bridge the gaps between VCSE organisations and social prescribers.  Speaking about Frontline, she says:

“Frontline is our health and well-being referral platform, it’s open to anybody and well used by social prescribers.  It really helps that referrals through the platform are all followed up by the Frontline team.  So, if organisations haven’t replied to referral, they will chase that up.  They'll also check the information about VCSE opportunities is current, so that opportunities on the platform aren’t out of date.”

Recently, Helen has been doing some targeted work to get more opportunities for veterans added to the platform as they identified a gap in provision.  She has worked closely with veterans’ organisations to help them join Frontline and reach a wider range of referrers and more members of the public.  Helen intends to expand this targeted work by increasing the drug and alcohol support opportunities on the platform.

Additionally, Thriving Together run regular information sharing and networking events for social prescribers and VCSE organisations so that they can build stronger links and share opportunities and challenges.  These events have taken place in Berwick, Blyth and Ponteland - a reminder of the scale of the area covered by the organisation. 

Thriving Together’s most recent event took place in Morpeth in September, inviting VCSE organisations and other stakeholders to take part in an informal networking session and gathering feedback about the areas people feel they would like some support. Events like this provide an effective forum to join up the VCSE sector and social prescribers, encouraging referrals and closer collaboration and also are a key part of the ongoing work to promote Frontline as a resource.

“As a Social Prescriber we really depend on learning what's out there in the community to signpost our patients too and through these events I've built up a lot of professional relationships and contacts which have proven invaluable to our role and patients.”  Hayley Dryden, Social Prescribing Link Worker

Two photos from an informal networking event, one shows somebody adding a request for support to a flipchart page, the other shows people chatting at the event.

Reflecting on the challenges of Thriving Together’s work in Northumberland, Helen Andrews said the main issue is transport.  It’s hard to get people to groups in this large, predominantly rural, sparsely populated county.  Public transport links often don’t enable people to access services in their area. Furthermore, there is uncertainty about the future of social prescribing link worker job roles and other similar professional roles which makes the links between VCSE organisations and social prescribers less stable.  These challenges must be considered by those at strategic level in the North East and North Cumbria Integrated Care Board (ICB) in order for social prescribing to flourish in Northumberland.

VONNE have enabled investment, as part of our Healthy Communities and Social Prescribing Infrastructure Investment Programme, into Thriving Together.  This programme is funded by the North East and North Cumbria ICB and supports thirteen organisations to improve the social prescribing offer in their localities.  Thriving Together have used the funding to support their information sharing and networking events and the development of the Frontline platform.

You can find out more about Thriving Together’s work here and sign up to Frontline here.  If you would like to know more about VONNE’s Healthy Communities and Social Prescribing programme you can access the webpage here and join the Healthy Communities and Social Prescribing Network to receive regular news and information.