Suffolk Family Carers are pleased to announce the successful award of a contract to deliver a new form of ‘Social Prescribing Plus’ in parts of East Suffolk.
Suffolk Family Carers will work alongside community officers from both East Suffolk and Suffolk County Council, with support from; Access Community Trust, The Shaw Trust and Age UK Suffolk.
“Connected Communities” will be launched in March 2020, giving anyone aged 65 and over, living in the rural parts of the Waveney and the rural areas around Framlingham, Wickham Market and Woodbridge the opportunity to improve their health and wellbeing, connect with their local community, and to focus on building on their personal priorities and interests.
Building on our current social prescribing project being delivered in South Rural and Mid Suffolk this new project will have community connectors in each area and a specially adapted vehicle to both reach out to isolated communities and to allow confidential conversations.
The principle of the service is that it will be asset based, building on local provision and putting people using the service at the centre, allowing individuals to have a real say in determining what best meets their needs.
The ethos of this way of working can be captured by asking; “What matters to you?” and not “What is the matter with you?
Colin Baldwin Locality Manager, Public Health, Suffolk County Council said “We are really excited to have Suffolk Family Carers as the key deliverers of this fantastic opportunity to try a new way of working to provide services to older people who are isolated rurally and/or socially. We are even more pleased to see other voluntary sector organisations working alongside SFC to ensure that we get the best possible outcomes for older people in East Suffolk. The project also involves linking with groups doing similar work in other parts of the UK and in France. This will hopefully provide us with lots of useful learning on different approaches”
