Children and young people’s mental and physical health has reached a crisis point. Social prescribing is emerging as a promising approach to respond to this, by addressing social needs arising from the social determinants of health and linking people with non-medical forms of support within the community. This can include activities such as volunteering, social groups, arts and sports as well as advice, education and training.
This approach fits with the ambitions of the recently published ‘Fit for the Future: 10 Year Health Plan for England’. Social prescribing can help achieve the Plan by shifting care from hospitals to communities and preventing sickness rather than just treating it. However, concerted action is needed from decisionmakers in order to embed and scale social prescribing so that children, young people and their families’ can benefit.
What did we learn?
- At present there is variable commitment to social prescribing across healthcare and the community, with opportunities for greater collaboration.
- Examples of fantastic clinical leadership exist but there is scope for more, particularly for more involvement of national politicians alongside children and young people.
- Understanding of child, youth and family social prescribing is growing, but the sector’s skills and capabilities could be enhanced through collaboration, peer support and training.
- Presently, the resource is insufficient and unsustainable, but this could be improved with designated funding streams.
- There is promising emerging evidence, however we need to invest further in gathering high quality data and individual stories to build the case for child and youth social prescribing.
- There are varied models of social prescribing being implemented in response to the local context; these could be better embedded in national health policy.
Read the policy brief to learn more.
“Our findings highlight that some brilliant work is already taking place across England, but they also show the gaps which need addressing when it comes to embedding and sustaining social prescribing for young people. With greater commitment, leadership, training, resourcing, evidence and policy support we can scale youth social prescribing and realise its potential as a tool to address urgent health challenges.”
— Dr Daniel Hayes, Principal Research Fellow and Director of SPYN
How can this be taken forward?
Based on this learning, the policy brief also includes recommendations for action, summarised below:
- Grow awareness of child and youth social prescribing further, to build a concrete understanding among all stakeholders of what it is, how it differs from other services and how it can be implemented.
- Facilitate greater cross-sector working between health services, voluntary, community, and social enterprise organisations, local authorities and policymakers by organising Communities of Practice.
- Provide leadership by having a youth social prescribing remit across relevant Government Departments and designated youth social prescribing clinical leaders in Primary Care Networks and Integrated Care Boards.
- Involve children and young people in designing and delivering services.
- Invest in the workforce, ensuring people working across the sector are supported through training and supervision.
- Increase funding for child and youth social prescribing, making sure there are long-term, ring-fenced options.
- Collect varied but meaningful metrics in line with the social prescribing information standard to help build the case for child and youth social prescribing.
- Embed child and youth social prescribing in national policy to motivate and guide stakeholders, including through the delivery of the 10 Year Health Plan.
“Social prescribing offers something different. It focuses on connection, creativity, movement and purpose – helping us feel understood, not just treated. […] This is not just a nice idea. It is a chance to tackle the social conditions affecting our health and give young people the support we actually need before we reach crisis point.”
— Zainab Tariq, SPYN Youth Advisory Group Member
Next steps and get involved
We now call upon policymakers, commissioners, youth leaders, health leaders, healthcare practitioners, link workers and researchers to hear the feedback and take action to help embed and sustain child and youth social prescribing.
Join us to discuss these findings and more at our next SPYN Member Meetup, taking place online on Thursday 16th October, 12 – 1 pm. Register now – we hope to see you there!
If you are interested in social prescribing for children, young people and families, and aren’t a member yet, we warmly invite you to join the Social Prescribing Youth Network (SPYN) – it’s free and open to all.
In our next steps for this project, we are convening researchers, young people, link workers and third sector organisations to hear their complementary perspectives. We will share further learning over the coming months.
Thank you to the policymakers and commissioners who took the time to share their insights in this roundtable. This programme of work is generously funded by the UCL Faculty of Population Health Sciences Policy Activities Support Fund 2025 and the Higher Education Innovation Funding (HEIF), managed by UCL Innovation & Enterprise. Our activities are also supported by an advisory board, youth advisory group and our partners, the National Academy for Social Prescribing, the Southbank Centre and The Prudence Trust.
