UK: Social prescribing on the NHS (and possible implications for ME/CFS services)

Suffolkres said:
There is a potentially very serious issue about the likely direction of travel for ME Service - its likely reliance on UK initiative, Social Prescribing. It is a threat to NICE NG206.

I just Googled 'Social Prescribing images' and was really concerned at what I found. It's shocking in relation to ME/CFS services for patient care. It effectively ignores the NICE approach.


Social Prescribing
‘Putting people at the centre of health care’


the-social-prescribing-network-300x261.png


Home of the Social Prescribing Network


What is social prescribing?
Social prescribing is a means of enabling professionals (often healthcare practitioners) to refer their people to ‘link workers’ or ‘social prescribers’ who are specially trained to support people in identifying and designing their own personalised solutions to help with social, emotional or practical needs to improve their health and wellbeing. This often utilises voluntary, community, faith and social enterprise services such as choirs, gardening clubs, exercises classes, art groups and many more.'


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The picture was from one of the King's Fund https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/publications/social-prescribingnominated providers website. I did not draw it! Here: https://collegeofmedicine.org.uk/social-prescribing/

The Academy rep GP did this video on it a while ago. https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/audio-video/helen-stokes-lampard-social-prescribing (Dr Helen Stokes-Lampard, Chair of the Royal College of General Practitioners, discusses how the use of social prescribing supports general practice to deliver high quality, holistic care.

This presentation was recorded at our conference, Social prescribing: from rhetoric to reality, on 18 May 2017.)
She co signed the awful letter effectively rejecting NICE in BMJ as well.

Our Local Clinic Executive have a lead who has already in 2019 suggested our ME Proposed service incorporates this initiative (with MUS, FND and IAPT).....
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Agree this is a big issue. I'm unaware of how it is 'planning services' rather than just being a signpost to whatever might already be out there. Which leaves huge accessibility gaps, and well as functional needs unmet.

Worse the fact is that it conceals this by its presence so people can't even just say there is nothing, or prove it. I think that those with ME/CFS (and probably a few other similar conditions) need specific services commissioned and designed otherwise there is an equality act issue on some pretty major things.

EDIT*:although if the right people were in place and they were enabled and not ignored they could indeed be collecting this 'user-side information' and be able to flag where certain things are well-resourced vs complete gaps e.g. for those who are home-based or have other difficulties, or certain functional services being over-subscribed etc.

ALso a funding inequality if, and I don't know how it is funded, a yearly budget isn't divided equally because noone is ring-fenced to be accessible or dedicated to certain essential things and all these choirs and gardening groups get funding 'because they are there' and it's just a yearly sum to be spent on whatever comes through.

Questions such as whether money that would otherwise go to services like the CAB is key. But even there the issue seems to be the voluntary nature of those who are 'the product' in current climates.

So there is more and more 'hollowing out' because the one bit that is essential isn't funded whilst all the 'surround and signposting' is.
 
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The UK ‘All-Party Parliamentary Group on Beauty and Wellbeing’ wants us to use more reflexology and Reiki on the NHS
by Edzard Ernst

The APPG's support for quack therapies shows just how misguided people can be. Ernst quotes the long list of 'complementary therapies' for which the APPG thinks there should be more support.
Here's his response:

This could have made me laugh, had it not been so serious. The committee is composed of MPs who might be full of goodwill. Yet, they seem utterly clueless regarding the ‘complementary therapies sector’. For instance, they seem to be unaware of the evidence for some of the treatments they want to promote, e.g. craniosacral therapy, aromatherapy, Reiki, shiatsu, energy healing, or reflexology (which is far less positive than they seem to assume); and they aim at enhancing the “perception of the professionalism” instead of improving the PROFESSIONALISM of the therapists (which obviously would include adherence to evidence-based practice). And perhaps the committee might have given some thought to the question of whether it is ethical to push dubious therapies onto the unsuspecting public.
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I have posted this on this thread because in the responses to the article it is pointed out that complementary therapies are already being prescribed on the NHS under the guise of 'social prescribing'.

Here's a quote from one response:

Social prescribing is of very serious concern to me as I have extensive first hand experience of some of the utterly insane therapies and activities offered.

Most recently my GP’s social prescriber recommeded that I attend a strange organisation offering SCAM alongside events featuring psychic mediums. A bit of digging showed some extremely concerning connections. There is no safeguarding or due dilligence in regard to service providers, partly because so many of the NHS staff involved in these initiatives are SCAM enthusiasts.

I have made use of social prescribing whilst unwell in order to have a good old rummage around inside its innards and I will report back as soon as I am able. What I have discovered is truly shocking.

The other deeply concerning way in which SCAM is being promoted in the NHS, and vast amounts of money squandered, is via the mental health “recovery” movment, which also promotes SCAM via “patient empowerment” and token vulnerable people with “lived experience” who are moved into positions of power and influence within the NHS.

Many of these token people prefer to think of themselves as “shamans” and “energy healers” rather than people with serious mental illness, which is unsurprising really. Most people would prefer to think of themselves as having supernatural powers that the “powers that be” wish to conceal, rather than having a serious mental illness.

Unfortunately this has birthed a situation in which deluded, dangerous charlatans (including antisemites, anti-vaxxers and people who think the Queen was a blood drinking lizard) are providing services to extremely vulnerable people via the NHS. The potential for the radicalisation of swathes of vulnerable people is a real and serious issue.
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And another one:
I have recently collected a lot of info via FOI requests, about use of SCAM in NHS palliative care. Example from Poole-Dorset NHS trust:

“Chakra Balancing is a therapy which combines aromatherapy, crystal therapy, sound healing and energy healing to work on bringing balance to the chakra system, the seven energy centres located within the body.”

This is from their internal procedure. It will take me a while to process all this – I have data from 21 trusts so far.
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The Secretariat for this APPG is Dentons Global Advisors with support from the National Hair and Beauty Federation, the Federation of Holistic Therapists and spabreaks.com.

Disquiet about APPGs is growing and has been mentioned before on the ME APPG thread. This group looks like exactly the sort of meretricious industry special pleading which merits a clampdown (even, to my mind, if “our” APPG suffers as a result; the ME community is dogged and robust enough to find legitimate ways to corral Westminster support).
 
SCAM

Bit on the nose. But really, there is zero difference between referring people to any of those alternative medicines and the BPS approach. Quackery is quackery. They equally lack evidence, and are equally boasted about as being effective by their respective professionals, using the loose definition of professional as this being their primary income.

How do they not see this? This is what I don't get. They can't possibly not see the problem with scientific medicine destroying its only legitimate claim to expertise: scientific validity. Once they adopted pseudoscience, there is only one way forward. Down, all the way down. It's the bad apples being distributed throughout the whole bunch so that it can spoil every bit of it.

Modern medicine is now some mix of scientific medicine and alternative medicine. Equal where it matters: where patients meet the system. This is legitimately disastrous. But the violin solos, though. So beautiful as the city burns.
 
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