Wow! What a day! Our feet have just about touched the ground since returning home to Derry after our first, and certainly not our last, Social Prescribing Unco in Manchester. The energy in the room was contagious, the speakers were inspiring and informative, and the delegates were engaged, energised and eager to network, learn and celebrate social prescribing. Our delegates led the agenda for UnCo and we couldn’t have asked for a better day, in a better community venue and as one of our delegates said ‘it’s nice to know we’re in this together”.

A huge thank you to our compere John Loughton, who had delegates laughing out loud due to his quick wit and ability to wake up a room through participation in an off-the-cuff dance routine. John took delegates on a journey through his life from when he was a young boy where his honest, endearing and emotional life story captured the hearts of delegates and set the scene for inspiration and established a shared vision for improving lives through social prescribing.

Andy Burnham, Mayor, Greater Manchester,  took to the stage as our morning keynote, and talked about promoting people’s health over health services,  how the third sector needs more support and how we should all champion social prescribing and lead by example for Manchester.

Delegates then split up into our morning Seminar Sessions with;

Giles Wilmore, Associate Lead, People in Communities, Greater Manchester Health and Social Care Partnership, who presented tips on how to start or scale your social prescribing strategy and then invited delegates to partake in a practical session with a step-by-step guide on starting and scaling social prescribing.

Cathy Connolly, CEO at Care Merseyside, presented to a packed room on evidence building, demonstrating impact and shared examples of the incredible social prescribing work currently being done by Care Merseyside.

Mohan Sekeram, GP & Social prescriber preacher at Wide Way Medical, shared his tips on how to get the buy-in from others for social prescribing and expanded on his popular mantra ‘Don’t medicalise, socialise’.

After lunch we welcomed the charismatic Jenny Chapman, Group Director of Innovation and Excellence at ForHousing, who demonstrated how to best collaborate in community based care and work in partnership to enhance health and wellbeing for residents.

Our afternoon Seminar Sessions kicked off with:

Bronagh Cooper, Link Worker at Bogside & Brandywell Health Forum, who gave an insight into her job role as a social prescribing link worker and hosted a group activity on how to write a link worker job description.

Fiona Linehan, Operational Nurse Manager at Hawthorne Practice hosted a session on personalised resettlement pathways through social prescribing in prison care.

Our final Seminar Session was hosted by none other than our very own Co-founders and Co CEOs Jennifer Neff and Leeann Monk-Ozgul who explored the benefits of digital in social prescribing and demonstrated how technology can help to evidence impact and outcomes.

A huge thank you to everyone who attended, presented and helped us to create an event that celebrated social prescribing in the way that you wanted! We are most definitely ‘in this together’ and we can’t wait to get everyone together again next year! Here’s a round-up of Social Prescribing UnCo 2019.