Home > Building the capacity for the evaluation of social prescribing: an evaluability assessment.

S3 Solutions. (2020) Building the capacity for the evaluation of social prescribing: an evaluability assessment. Dublin: Health Service Executive and Department of Health.

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External website: https://www.hse.ie/eng/services/list/4/mental-heal...


Social Prescribing is a means of enabling GPs and other frontline healthcare professionals to refer patients to a Link Worker - to provide them with a face to face conversation during which they can learn about the possibilities and design their own personalised solutions, i.e. ‘co-produce’ their ‘social prescription’- so that people with social, emotional or practical needs are empowered to find solutions which will improve their health and wellbeing, often using services provided by the voluntary and community sector. It is an innovative and growing movement, with the potential to reduce the financial burden on the national health service and particularly on Primary Care. 

This report is framed around the three dimensions of Evaluability Assessment (Davies, 2013), including:

  1. Evaluability in principle (i.e. clarity of the intervention and its theory of change)
  2. Evaluability in practice (i.e. what data are available and what systems are in place to provide it)
  3. Evaluability usefulness (i.e.what interest do stakeholders have in using evaluation findings for example, to enable strategic decision making). 

Applying this structure, the report also includes:

  • An examination of the Social Prescribing landscape in Ireland
  • An Evaluation Index, developed by S3 Solutions and Elemental, to show the current range of evaluation practice in Ireland
  • Knowledge and learning from other systems, models, policy and practice around Social Prescribing
  • The Primary Care landscape and strategic context within which Social Prescribing operates in Ireland
  • The consensus based feedback on a Minimum Data Outcomes Framework for Social Prescribing in Ireland.

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