Work Packages One & Two
Information on 1,600 people from GP records will be compared in three ways: (i) with people in practices who don’t have the service; (ii) with people from the same practice who are eligible but don’t take up the service, and (iii) people who entered the programme at the beginning with people who entered it later. The cost and effectiveness of social prescribing will be compared to existing treatment to see whether the service is value for money.

Work Package Three
Observations and interviews with a range of people including: those using the service, their families and friends, Link Workers delivering the service and staff in the voluntary and community sectors providing ‘linked’ services. This approach will be used to find out about these various groups and their experience of social prescribing, furthermore it will help us to find out what works, why it works, what doesn’t work and why.

Work Package Four