By Sarah McLaughlin | Executive Director for Health Programmes | Agewell Partnership

This is the perfect moment in time to celebrate Social Prescribing Week 2026.

The news is full of war, cost of living crisis and pressures on our healthcare services.

The stress of managing the weekly budget or heating the home, the sadness of not having spoken to anyone other than the postman all week or the fear of the winter coming, when your windows are draughty, are all factors that can make us ill. This is especially true for Older People.

Our health is affected by the conditions we live, work and play in and so it makes perfect sense that our health cannot solely be improved by clinicians and medications alone.

But there is a quiet but powerful army of Social Prescribing services striving to connect people to support in their local communities that can help them to address the stressful issues in their lives that matter to them, connecting them with appropriate supports and potentially ease demand on GP and A&E .

Across Mid & East Antrim, older people are being connected to community supports that boost wellbeing, independence and confidence through IMPACTAgewell®, our award-winning model of care which has been operating here since 2017 funded by the Department of Health.

We believe in an asset-based community development approach to social prescribing, looking into the communities Older People live in and connecting them while also building capacity in these groups by providing them with a payment for every person referred.  Anyone aged over the age of 60, living with a long-term health condition can be referred to IMPACTAgewell® for support.

Our officers then visit them at home for up to 6 months to talk to them about what is important to them and work with them to plan a way forward connecting them with community supports such as good morning calls, walking groups, benefits advice, bereavement counselling and much more. IMPACTAgewell® officers also work closely with the healthcare professionals and statutory agencies. Meeting with GPs, social workers and community pharmacists in bimonthly locality hubs enables information sharing about the people we support and encourages true person-centred support. 

A recent person supported by IMPACTAgewell® had experienced the death of her son and brother within the last year. She described being at rock bottom mentally. After being referred into IMPACTAgewell® by her GP she was able to talk to her officer about her grief and loneliness. She agreed to be connected with her local Good Morning service receiving daily calls from a volunteer and then attending counselling sessions which helped her to work through her feelings. She now has become a volunteer with the Good Morning service, talking to other isolated Older People and says that she feels uplifted after making her calls, being able to forget about her problems when she was talking to other people. 

IMPACTAgewell® services have been audited and found to be extremely cost effective. Every £1 spent on IMPACTAgewell® saves £2.38 through reduced demand for GPs and A&E.

A review of the work of IMPACTAgewell® conducted by the UK Centre for Improving Adult Social Care Together recommended not only that it should continue, but also that its activities should act as a model for replication across Northern Ireland and elsewhere.

IMPACTAgewell® is not the only model of social prescribing in Northern Ireland but it is a postcode lottery to access services and we have lost some successful models due to a lack of sustainable funding. Social Prescribing is widely used in the NHS UK and the HSE in the Republic of Ireland but it is not yet recognised by policy here.

In 2022 a baseline assessment of Social Prescribing in Northern Ireland was undertaken which recommended a regional definition and framework for Social Prescribing, stable funding models and stronger integration into healthcare systems.

The new Neighbourhood Model of Health and Wellbeing, part of the Department of Health’s reset plan has the potential to recognise the effectiveness of social prescribing and start to embed it across Northern Ireland. 

So this Social Prescribing Week we want to amplify the voices of Social Prescribing workers, the community and voluntary sector and Older People across Northern Ireland, to celebrate the incredible work we can achieve with the people we support, enabling them to live the life they choose and say thank you to our partners who have enabled us to continue this important work in Mid and East Antrim. There is a huge potential for Social Prescribing across Northern Ireland and now is the time to recognise it.