Part of 2. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Services – in the Senedd at 2:50 pm on 19 September 2018.
I'm familiar with the primary care hub that sits within Public Health Wales and their report on social prescribing. There's a challenge, I think, for all of us in the way we talk about healthcare issues in this Chamber and with the wider public. I don't expect the public to become more familiar with the term 'social prescribing' in general terms or understand what it is, because there are a variety of things that we would call social prescribing. It's actually about how we renormalise a conversation about different ways to help people to achieve their health and well-being goals across physical and mental health. You don't need to know, I think, if it's suggested, for example, that you join your local ramblers group that that's a course of social prescribing. It's more about how you're helped to achieve different goals to improve your health and well-being, and I think we've regularly used language that excludes the public from a well-informed conversation. Because, actually, if you say, 'If you did this particular activity or if you joined a particular group, that might have a benefit', that's the sort of conversation we need to re-engineer and that is, in many ways, about access to information about what is already available as well as developing an evidence base for the impact on physical and mental well-being.