Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment his Department has made of the role of the arts in social prescribing.

Social prescribing is a non-clinical intervention that enables general practitioners and other frontline healthcare professionals to refer people to ‘activities’ in their community, such as chess, book clubs, exercise groups, instead of offering only medicalised solutions.

The first point of referral is usually a voluntary sector link worker who can talk to each person about the things that matter to them. Together they can co-produce a social prescription that will help to improve their health and wellbeing through access to activities and community groups that are of interest to them; this may include art-based activities.