Connecting Roots: Co-creating a Green Social Prescribing Network in Walsall for Health and Wellbeing

在大自然中度过一段时间有助于身心健康，也是人们应对新冠肺炎疫情压力的关键因素之一。它与感恩和自我价值感有关，可以帮助人们从压力和精神疾病中恢复过来。这种与大自然的体验也有助于建立一种地方感和社区感，并培养归属感。全科医生、护士和其他医疗保健专业人员现在可以向那些可能从中受益的人开出基于自然的活动处方，例如为健康计划步行和社区园艺。这就是所谓的绿色社交处方。NHS越来越支持更广泛地使用它，特别是对于那些获得医疗保健的人，他们通常也更少接触自然。志愿、社区和社会企业(VCSE)部门向英国当地社区提供大部分绿色社会处方服务。这些VCSE面临着发展的挑战，以便更大比例的有需要的人能够从大自然提供的东西中受益。在新冠肺炎大流行之后，虚拟企业教育机构对其服务的需求越来越大。许多VCSE单独行动以扩大规模存在重大障碍。相互协作为实现急需的增长提供了一条途径，以减少碎片化、重复和低效。它有助于改善该部门的集体影响及其可持续性，并创造许多互惠互利，包括提供获得专门知识和资源的机会、扩大影响范围和改进内部程序。我们的目标是通过以下方式利用设计支持绿色社会处方服务的扩展：(I)设想一个能够创造适当条件的系统，以最好地支持在系统层面推广地方绿色社会处方；(Ii)与沃尔索尔的当地VCSE共同创建一个绿色社会处方网络，以提高该行业的集体影响力，并让那些较少被听到的人发出声音。通过学习，我们将(Iii)制定方法，并通过参与和传播广泛提供这些方法。我们已经认识到真正自下而上和以地点为基础的方法的重要性，这种方法考虑到当地资产的整体，包括实际所在地的现实和当地的生活体验。因此，通过设计，这个项目将使人们参与一个开放的对话，使不同利益相关者的需求能够分享更多不同的见解，并为这些地方VCSE之间发展愿景、自下而上的政策和合作开辟新的途径。该项目将以沃尔索尔为例，代表英国许多贫困地区，在这些地区，公共卫生受到健康不平等和缺乏体育锻炼等问题的挑战，这些问题可能可以通过绿色社会处方有效地解决。它将由皇家艺术学院领导，与One Walsall，Active Black Country，MindKind项目和Caldmore社区花园合作，提供为期12个月的研究计划。该项目的主要成果是：(I)支持推广绿色社会处方的系统愿景和政策建议；(Ii)沃尔索尔的绿色社会处方网络，以支持VCSE的发展，使基于自然的活动能够造福更多有需要的人；(Iii)通过可广泛采用的设计，扩大VCSE在绿色社会处方中的规模。

Spending time in nature supports both mental and physical health and has been one of the key factors enabling people to cope with the stress of the COVID-19 pandemic. It is associated with a sense of gratitude and self-worth and can help people recover from stress and mental illness. This kind of experience with nature also helps to build a sense of place and community and foster feelings of belonging. GPs, nurses and other healthcare professionals can now prescribe nature-based activities, such as walking for health schemes and community gardening, to those who could benefit from them. This is called green social prescribing. There is growing NHS support to use it more widely, particularly for those with poor access to healthcare who often also access nature less.The Voluntary, Community and Social Enterprise (VCSE) sector delivers the majority of the green social prescribing services to local communities in the UK. These VCSEs are faced with challenges to grow so that a greater proportion of those in need can benefit from what nature offers. Following the COVID-19 pandemic, VCSE organisations are experiencing greater demand for their services. Significant barriers exist for many VCSEs acting alone to scale. Collaboration with each other provides one avenue toward much-needed growth in order to reduce fragmentation, duplication and inefficiency. It helps improve the collective impact of the sector and its sustainability, and creates many mutual benefits including providing access to expertise and resources, increasing reach, and improving internal processes. Our aim is to use design to support the scaling of green social prescribing services through (i) envisaging a system that creates the right conditions to best support scaling local green social prescribing at the system level; (ii) co-creating a green social prescribing network with local VCSEs in Walsall that improve the sector's collective impact and give voice to those who have been less heard. From the learning, we will (iii) devise the methods and make them widely available through engagement and dissemination. We have recognised the importance of a genuinely bottom up and place-based approach that considers the totality of local assets, including the realities of the physical locality and local lived experience. Therefore, through design, this project will engage people in an open dialogue that enables more diverse insights on the needs of different stakeholders to be shared and opens new avenues for developing visions, bottom-up policies and collaboration amongst these local VCSEs. This project will focus on Walsall as an example representing many deprived regions in the UK where public health is challenged by issues e.g. health inequality and physical inactivity that could potentially be addressed effectively through green social prescribing. It will be led by the Royal College of Art, in partnership with One Walsall, Active Black Country, The MindKind Projects, and Caldmore Community Garden to deliver a 12-month research programme. The main outcomes of the project are:(i) a system vision and policy recommendations to support scaling green social prescribing; (ii) a green social prescribing network in Walsall to support VCSEs to grow so that nature-based activities can benefit more people in need; (iii) methods and processes to scale VCSEs in green social prescribing through design that can be widely adopted.