By: Kendall Worth
The Good news I bring you in this BLOG is... work is underway... and something is coming.
If you are a regular reader you will recall that over the last year I have written many times about Social Prescriptions and advocating for a possible Social Prescription Organization to come to Halifax. See https://worthmatters.blogspot.com/search/label/social%20prescription
However, over time it has become clear that we are talking about just one part of social prescribing. Having an organization that works on helping improve people’s feelings of social isolation and loneliness, which is made a lot worse when you are living in poverty, would be a good start.
We realized at some point ( I am working on this with Sandi Weagle and Margaret Anne McHugh) that if we were going to go with calling the program -- Social Prescriptions -- we would have to have involvement from the medical community, which was a much bigger plan than we had in mind!
In this previous BLOG post I said:
“Social Prescribing is involving healthcare in the determinants of health. A professional writes the prescription and sends you directly to an agency or to a navigator who finds what you need. We need a group who will work on the “social part”, after the prescription is written. So I am using “social prescribing” as short hand for the whole system. Those who prescribe, and the implementation of programs that are needed to fulfill prescriptions.
So far we are calling this project - Mitigating Social Isolation. However, the name will change (Let me know if you think of a smart catchy title!) as work goes on. We want to improve social connections in people who live in poverty.
The update I can provide today is work is underway to get this program up and running here in Halifax. We hope to trial a first event/activity in June, and we have applied for a Community Health Board Grant so that we can implement a whole series beginning in Sept. We will not know if we are successful in that grant until July. This project/program is to serve the purpose of reducing social isolation and finding solutions for people living in poverty to make new friends/make new social contacts.
In the last couple of months we left surveys at various soup-kitchens and drop-ins where people living in poverty are going, not only for free meals but also seeking some for Socializing. The survey directly asks people living in poverty what activities involving social exchanges that they are interested in… but the return rate was very low – so we are still looking for ideas.
Also, Dalhousie School of Social Work has agreed to assist the program with facilitating. workshops. This is all good news.
However, if any of you living in poverty who are looking for this project to be an opportunity to move to social connections we are optimistic. But everything is not nailed down yet!
The reality is that having a program and the potential activities depend entirely on what funding, we are eligible and can apply for… Many people have expressed an interest in events that are based on entertainment (like games and movies) The grant is for recreation NOT entertainment – so this type of activity is unlikely, as it does not help people find or identify people to socially connect with. Ideas for activities that mean people are interacting – is the basis of the program – not watching something on your own. We are still convinced that we can have fun and make friends!
This is the update I am providing today, but stayed tuned this moves forward every day!
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