Supporting Primary Care

By Giles Piercy, Helpforce Programme Manager

The Helpforce Companions project is a key component of Helpforce’s Back to Health framework, designed to encourage volunteers to support health and wellbeing in primary care. Building on its success in working with hospital trusts, Helpforce has, over the past 18 months, been supporting a pilot project at two GP practices in West London.

The aim of the project has been to explore how volunteers can support patients identified by their GP as being in need of companionship support. Most of us, when we need assistance, such as picking up a prescription, helping us get to a hospital appointment or just joining us for a walk, can probably call on a friend, family member or neighbour to help. However, many people don’t have that support, and suffer impaired health and wellbeing or loneliness as a result. GPs are very aware that, in addition to medical care, vulnerable patients may need social support to regain their health, which is beyond GP resources to provide.

This is where Helpforce Companions come in. When doctors or other staff in a GP practice identify a patient who they think would benefit from a volunteer companion, they can refer them to the Social Prescribing Link Worker (SPLW) attached to their practice, a role that exists in all Primary Care Networks.

At the practices we’ve been supporting in this pilot, the SPLW talks to the patient to assess whether they would benefit from being connected to a volunteer Helpforce Companion. If so, the SPLW refers the patient to a local partner organisation, which matches the patient with an appropriate volunteer. Helpforce has been supporting local voluntary organisations to provide this role in the pilot, recognising that recruiting, managing, training and supervising volunteers takes experience and resources.

Due largely to the restrictions of Covid, the pilot has reached fewer patients than we had hoped. Nevertheless, the reactions of patients, volunteers, the SPLWs and the practices have been extremely positive. For example, a patient with physical and mental health problems says “my volunteer helper does everything for me, whatever I need. She’s very special, she helps my mood. She’s like my close family.” Her corresponding volunteer also benefited: “She [the patient] also helps me a lot. When I first started walking with her, I was unemployed and it was amazing to have a purpose. When I got pregnant, I was very sick but volunteering with her got me out walking. Without her, there would have been days I wouldn’t have got out of bed.”

The pilot has also provided us with important insights and lessons on how to establish and make such a primary care project work. We have also produced a guide for others interested in adopting and adapting aspects of this service. We are delighted to report that Neo Health, the Primary Care Network, we have been working with in Kensington & Chelsea, have now committed to take on the funding of the project. Dr Yasmin Razak the local Clinical Director said “Helpforce Companions add a significant dimension to the support that our social prescribers can provide. The impact on our patients and staff are very clear and we are committed to supporting the scaling up of this service over the coming months across the whole of our primary care network” You can watch a video about Dr Yasmin Razak and volunteers here.