Social prescribing for dementia – reviewing the international evidence

Social prescribing helps to link people with health and wellbeing needs to support in the community. Doctors (GPs) can initiate social prescribing, but other people can also ‘refer’ to social prescribing, such as charity workers or social workers. 

Social prescribing often involves having an appointment or telephone call with a link worker who will try to understand the needs of the individual and recommend activities or community groups that the individual may find helpful.

There are many variations in social prescribing which can make it confusing as different people can mean different things. However, it is helpful that a recent study came up with a standard definition which was acceptable to many people in many countries. 

The authors describe social prescribing as having the following components: 

• Referral route into the service 
• Link worker
• Person-centred care plan
• Access to resources

We found this was a really helpful starting point to understand the evidence about social prescribing, specifically for people with dementia.

Many reports about social prescribing describe how these services can benefit people with mental health problems or physical health problems. Sometimes specific conditions are mentioned, such as anxiety or depression. 

Often social prescribers describe working in a person-centred or family orientated way, rather than using a diagnosis as a starting point. This may explain why there are few studies describing how people with dementia, specifically, can benefit from social prescribing.

Some health policies suggest that social prescribing could be used to support people with dementia. In order to implement these policies, health and social care leaders need to know what the evidence says. 

With this in mind, we summarised all the reports or evidence about social prescribing for people with dementia. We searched international databases for evidence. For example, do people with dementia benefit from social prescribing in the same way as other groups of people? 

Some symptoms of dementia, including memory problems and loss of motivation may limit the benefits of social prescribing – has this been studied? Furthermore, are there any adaptations that have been tried to help people with dementia specifically? 

We found that there was a limited amount of evidence which suggested that social prescribing could be beneficial for people with dementia. There was a lack of reporting of adaptations or considerations to address specific impairments or needs of people with dementia.

We are pleased to say that this topic is a growing area of research interest, and there are ongoing research programmes on social prescribing for dementia. Recent publications from the ‘SPLENDID’ research programme have summarised UK studies and reports of social prescribing and post-diagnostic services for people with dementia. 

Also, from the same research programme, a recent qualitative study was published exploring views of social prescribers and service users. This study was published after we had submitted our review for publication and unfortunately wasn’t included.

In summary, we anticipate that people with dementia can gain benefits from social prescribing, similar to other patient groups, however there is limited direct evidence. We recommend that volunteers and staff receive additional training and resources to tailor their support to the specific needs of people with dementia.

Our research was funded by NIHR ARC East Midlands.