www.justgo.org.uk, the UK’s first web portal created by the community for the NHS to focus specifically on Social Prescribing, an important and emerging NHS community health initiative, has been designed and written by Purepages Group, an integrated marketing communications and high-level web development Company based in Bolton.
Purepages client, REAL Bacup, is a ‘not for profit’ social enterprise and community health organisation operating in the Rossendale Valley, and funded by East Lancashire PCT on behalf of the NHS. Janet Fraser, Managing Partner, was very keen to ensure that key aspects of their NHS remit were translated and incorporated into the design and functionality of the Web portal in order to encourage significant use by the whole community. Though only live for a week or so, the reaction to the site has been amazingly positive and some great testimonials have been received already:-
“…..the site looks good and is easy to follow”
Christine Wright, Co-ordinator, STR (Social Inclusion) workers, Lancashire Care Trust
“This is an informative and valuable resource for the people of Rossendale. We will be promoting it to our families and the health practitioners that work out of our Centre have praised the ease of use and the one stop approach for all these services.” Barry Payton, Centre Manager, Haslingden Community Link & Childrens Centre
Social prescribing is generally defined as a mechanism for connecting patients in primary care with non-medical organisational support from within their own community. For example, this might include exercise or arts on prescription, referral to community based self help groups, befriending schemes and volunteering opportunities, and support with benefits, debt, legal advice and parenting problems.
Major benefits of social prescribing may include improving mental health outcomes, a reduction in social isolation, and the improvement of the general community wellbeing.
To compliment the web portal REAL has developed a volunteer led service to reach the people of Rossendale and is working with voluntary and community organisations and Healthcare Professionals to promote to their service users. A full evaluation and monitoring system will measure the impact and collect wellbeing feedback from the users.
Both Mike Phillips, managing director of Purepages Group and Janet Fraser from REAL are keen to get the message across that this sort of Internet based community health project can potentially deliver stunning results. By improving many aspects of an individual’s mental and physical well-being in a non-invasive way, it reduces the need to refer to their GP’s prescription pad. “Minimising the use of drugs and tablets has to a good thing” said Janet
Purepages/REAL’
Mike Phillips, managing director of Purepages Group, Bolton, discussing NHS functionality requirements with his client, Janet Fraser of REAL social enterprise of Rossendale. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) are amongst topics for discussion
For further information you may contact
Mike Phillips
mikep@purepagesgroup.com
Janet Fraser 01706 871730 / 07787 502770
Janet.fraser@
