This multidisciplinary research project draws together and builds on ICRD’s recent work with community social prescribing providers (Massie et al., 2019) and with children and young people (Massie et al., 2015; 2018; 2019) to ensure the development of a new frontier of social prescribing is evidence-based from its inception to meet the needs of children and young people. Working with our existing partners in the West Midlands, the project involves a review of existing evidence and – given the lack of practice and research in this area – draws on evidence from allied fields. New data will be collected to understand local needs and context and to ensure the design meets their needs in a realistic and practical way.
The project will be output focused and will both consider current policy and regional data sources, and feed in the findings from new evidence, in order to explore youth social prescribing interventions in the region and develop a novel framework for evaluation measures to capture how such work has an impact on the employability and economic status of service users. Through engaging with regional service providers and referring organisations, their voices will directly feed into policy briefings at the culmination of the project.