How can our everyday ‘bumping-in’ places be a distributor for preventive social prescribing’?
By Annette Holman
“No-one from the public sector has visited my store in the past 40 years.”
This is what one business owner told me when I visited his family run Convenience Store. It seemed like a missed opportunity to me. A business that has been in the area for such a long time and built up local knowledge and trusted relationships with residents, that has not yet been recognised for its asset of being a key connector to his community.
I have previously written about the important social role convenience stores play in their communities. They are often described as hubs, with daily trips to the store being an outing to some people who may be feeling more isolated or lonely in their local area.
How can this regular trusted touchpoint for many residents be recognised further as a preventive health and wellbeing tool in our communities? Especially now the NHS focus has shifted their work from hospital to community and from sickness to prevention.
The link to Social Prescribing
March 19th is Social Prescribing Day. It is now a well established mechanism that focuses on peoples non-medical needs and connecting them with non-clinical services in the community. It is set up as a referral process where GPs, hospitals or charities can refer residents into social support.. The process is supported by a key cohort of link workers across the country.
But, is there a further step we can all take? Can we all play a part in recognising preventative measures for ourselves and others to help avoid the clinical referral in the first place? Is preventative social prescribing a role we can all play in our communities?
The recent insight from the Royal Society for Public Health shows that there is support for a wide range of professions to receive training to promote physical and mental health and wellbeing, such as teachers, staff in gyms or community leaders, and that Make Every Contact Count (MECC) training for such roles is supported by the public.
But, it shouldn’t just stop there. How about spreading it wider? Let’s look at those places that have a natural interaction point that are not the typical wellbeing spots. This is where we think the role of Convenience Stores and their staff can have a huge effect in their communities. By informing them of health awareness initiatives and signposts to local support they are ideally positioned to reach community members through their regular and trusted interactions. This is what we believe is possible here at Neighbourly Lab.
About our trials in Convenience Stores
Over the past 6 months we have been trialling distributing a locally focused health and wellbeing leaflet into convenience stores as part of ‘Unlocking social connection through shops’ programme of work, funded by the National Lottery Community Fund.
The intended outcome of this initiative is that relevant health and wellbeing information and invitations to community events spreads into the community, enabling social opportunities to be more visible for local people, especially for those not yet engaged in community activity and/or may be isolated thus supporting the preventative goal.
We’ve partnered with the North and West Bristol Locality Partnership and some key voluntary organisations across Bristol and with the Public Health team at Redbridge Council to test this initiative in various locations.
An important element of this trial was around the engagement and conversation point the shop worker and customer may which follows the concept of the Making Every Contact Count.
From our trials and engagement, we have already found that:
- Residents in our research recognised that there was an opportunity to find out about what’s on to support their health and wellbeing in their areas through their everyday places and spaces such as shops.
- There is a great appetite from convenience stores to help their community, but their time and capacity is limited so interventions need to be easy for them to engage with.
- Public health and NHS teams are recognising the potential for a mechanism to reach members in the community though different means
We are coming to the end of our trials and capturing the learnings of this opportunity. Our final report is due in June and will be supported by some practical guides on how public health and NHS teams can partner with Convenience Stores and other small businesses to support their communities further.
To hear more about our work with both convenience stores and our separate trials creating community hubs in supermarket spaces please contact: annette@neighbourlylab.com