Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will ensure that all patients on elective waiting lists for (a) all cases, (b) 18 months and (c) 12 months or more are offered social prescribing to assist with the health and wellbeing of patients.

In response to the pandemic, general practitioners are making use of social prescribing link workers to support patients to build resilience and take control of their health and wellbeing. As part of primary care teams, link workers are also supporting people to ‘wait well’ whilst they are waiting for elective care by connecting people to advice and support to help them manage their physical and mental health and address wider social issues that are affecting their physical and mental health, such as loneliness, finance or employment. Social prescribing is also part of a targeted NHS England and NHS Improvement initiative to use personalised care approaches to support elective waiting list management. Beginning with musculoskeletal pathways, this work is planned to be cascaded to all priority clinical programmes this year.