Measuring the economic impact of the wellspring healthy living centre's social prescribing wellbeing programme for low level mental health issues encountered by GP services

Abstract

This research evaluates the impacts of a holistic social prescribing Wellbeing Programme delivered by the Wellspring Healthy Living Centre, Bristol. As a holistic social prescribing approach it is representative of many third sector led interventions seeking to support local primary care services. It offers GP-referred patients 12 weeks of one-to-one support followed by 12 months of group support around a particular activity. Socio-economic impact was measured through Social Return On Investment (SROI) approach using a pre and post intervention interviews using the Wellspring Wellbeing Questionnaire tool (WWQ). Data collected using the WWQ suggests that three months after a beneficiary’s induction on the intervention beneficiaries show statistically significant improvement in: PHQ9 (p=<0.001), GAD7(p=<0.001) , Friendship Scale (p=<0.001), ONS Wellbeing measures (item range p=<0.05 through to p= 0.001), perceived economic wellbeing (p=<0.0001) and the IPAQ items for moderate exercise. Analysis of GP contact times also suggest that for 6 in 10 beneficiaries there is a reduction in their GP attendance rates in the 12 months post intervention compared to the 12 months period prior to the referral. For 26% of beneficiaries it stayed the same and for 14% it actually increased. Having established the social impact of the Wellbeing Programme we calculate a Social Return on Investment ratio of £2.90:£1.

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