News from the gardening world
Gardening to be offered as part of a new social care health initiative
The NHS is to offer gardening among a range of community services to help boost health, both mental and physical, in their patients.
The new social prescribing initiative will involve recruiting 1,000 ‘link workers’ to council people on their needs to find better alternatives to medication. The aim is to achieve a substantial reduction in use of NHS services, including GP attendances.
NHS strategists cite growing evidence that community services, such as exercise or art classes, history groups, horticultural initiatives and other physical activities can ‘boost health more than dishing out pills or other treatments’.
It currently engages with a number of horticulturally related projects, such as the Lambeth GP Food Co-op, that encourages residents, patients and NHS staff to create gardens within GP practices, growing food and ornamentals on unused University hospital land in Birmingham, to horticultural therapy and rehabilitation programmes as part of mental health services in North East Lincolnshire.
The NHS hopes to secure and fund the army of workers by 2021, with a projection that by 2023-24 social prescribers will be handling around 900,000 patients a year.
The provision is part of the NHS’ £4.5 billion Long Term Plan, which is part of a new service model for the 21st century across England, where health bodies come together to provide better, joined up care in partnership with local government. “A one size fits all health and care system simply cannot meet the increasing complexity of people’s needs and expectations,” said James Sanderson, NHS England Director of Personalised Care,
“So we’re setting out how people who live with multiple long-term conditions can expect the same choice and control over their mental and physical health they have come to expect in every other aspect of their life.”