It's Social Prescribing Week! What better way to celebrate than to speak to social prescribing link workers who work tirelessly on the ground to provide personalised care for individuals, supporting them to live their best lives.

This week, Dr Radha is joined by three inspirational women.

Our first guest is Bev Taylor, who is the Executive Director of Strategy at the National Academy for Social Prescribing. Bev led social prescribing at NHS England from 2015-2019. She worked with partners to develop regional social prescribing networks, an online social prescribing community, build the social prescribing team (as part of the Personalised Care Group), produce national guidance, provide learning and development support for social prescribing link workers and build the case for NHS Long Term Plan investment. This work resulted in a NHS Long Term Plan commitment to embed 4500 social prescribing link workers in every primary care network multi-disciplinary team across England and to enable over 900,000 people to benefit from social prescribing.

Bev’s background is as a housing manager and community development worker. She has worked 30 years in the VCSE sector, where she has supported co-production and leadership development at local, regional and national levels. Bev co-led Regional Voices, Jesuit and supported the creation of new carers, housing, out-of-school and mental health community projects.

Our second guest is Gay Palmer. Gay works as a link worker for Southwark PCN, she is also a Trustee at NASP. Gay has supported the programme in Southwark since it was implemented in March 2020 and has helped to maintain its ongoing growth and development in relation to number of referrals and the capacity of the team.

Gay has a 20-year history of being a Nurse and has worked in a variety of community settings across North and East London. The diverse roles gave rise to many opportunities to understand the needs of people and the impact that wider determinants of health can have on a person their family and the community.

Gays life ethos is “keep it moving take the time to learn, grow, and move with what you have”, which she feels has allowed her to have a fulfilling career with diverse opportunities. These opportunities and experiences she hope will now benefit social prescribing locally and to make an impact on the wider community within social prescribing.

Thirdly Radha will be joined by Michelle Pilling. Michelle is Senior Lead for Social Prescribing at NHS England and NHS Improvement. She has held previous senior leadership roles as Deputy Chair of a clinical commissioning group (CCG) and as North West Social Prescribing Regional Learning Coordinator for NHS England and NHS Improvement.

Her social prescribing journey started back in 2001, first as a link worker in the VCSE sector, as a charity manager, through to strategic leadership roles in the NHS. She brings a broad perspective of social prescribing and the VCSE and health and care economy, with extensive experience of coproduction and personalised care. In her previous roles she is most proud of the £4.2 million invested through the CCG in grass root community commissioning, secured through her CCG role. Her values align with promoting ethical approaches to social prescribing that focus on sustainable community development to deliver truly integrated care. Developing a different model of 21st Century healthcare that combines wellbeing and prevention with bio-medical approaches.

Don't forget #SocialPrescribingDay on the 10 March!