Defra Green Social Prescribing Evaluation

Background
The Covid-19 pandemic highlighted the impact of green spaces on our mental health and wellbeing. Social prescribing and community-based support enables general practitioners, other health and care practitioners and local agencies to refer people to a link worker who gives people time and focuses on what matters to each person. For some people this will be green social prescribing, which links them to nature-based interventions and activities, such as local walking for health schemes, community gardening and food-growing projects.

Aims
In collaboration with a team of researchers from the University of Exeter, the University of Plymouth, the University of Sheffield and Sheffield Hallam University, we investigated whether prescribing nature can help prevent and tackle mental ill health.

What we did
From 2021 to 2023, the research consortium carried out an in-depth evaluation across seven test and learn sites targeting communities in England hardest hit by COVID-19. As part of this work, we helped these sites understand how, and in what ways, their activities can successfully connect people with nature to improve mental health and wellbeing. The team also took a “lighter touch” approach to evaluating green social prescribing in other areas, improving understanding of how green social prescribing could be scaled up and embedded into practice effectively.

Funding
The original evaluation was funded for a total of £887,413 from HM Treasury’s Shared Outcomes Fund, a fund to pilot innovative ways of working to improve collaboration on priority policy areas that sit across, and are delivered by, multiple public sector organisations to improve outcomes and deliver better value for citizens.

The evaluation contract has been awarded by the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), and supported by Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), Natural England, NHS England, Public Health England, Sport England, the National Academy of Social Prescribing (NASP), and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG).

Next steps
The research consortium have been funded to build on the initial phase of this project and evaluate a one year extension. You can read more about the extension here.