Health & Wellbeing Support Roles Survey

What are “Health & Wellbeing Support Roles”?

For the purposes of this survey, we are using the term 'health and wellbeing support role' to mean someone in a GP practice, hospital, voluntary organisation or other organisation who is responsible for coordinating, advising and helping residents arrange access to exercise, health and wellbeing advice, financial advice, housing advice, employment support, education, mental wellbeing or social connections. These roles may also be referred to as 'personalised care workers' or 'social prescribers'.

There are six job titles or roles that are associated with this type of service which this survey is interested in, although we recognise there may be other roles that could be included.

  1. Social Prescribing Link Workers, located in GP practices, connect people to services, community support and advice to improve their health and wellbeing by focussing on what matters to the person.
  2. Health and Wellbeing Coaches, located in GP practices, use specialist coaching and behaviour change methods to enable people to be active participants in physical and mental health.
  3. Care coordinators, located in GP practices, provide proactive support to people living with complex needs requiring multiple care services.
  4. Community Neighbourhood Link Workers, located in libraries, provide a 6 week personalised and targeted service designed to prevent loneliness and isolation by reconnecting into the community, and delay or reduce the need for more intensive, long-term health and social care support.
  5. Health and Social Care Navigators, located in East Ham Care Centre and East London NHS Foundation Trust sites, support people who have complex health care needs by working closely with the GP, local authority and other stakeholder colleagues.
  6. Community Connectors, located in Voluntary, Community and Social Enterprises and East London NHS Foundation Trust sites, provide 1:1 or group support as part of the Community Integrated Mental Health Service to provide support for residents with a Serious Mental Illness and/or Complex Mental health needs.