Abstract:

For ensuring good health across the whole Nation, a vision and direction for individuals and communities to thrive and prosper, is ingrained in three legislative frameworks, namely:
(i) A Healthier Wales (2019)
(ii) the Wellbeing of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015 and
(iii) the Social Services and Wellbeing (Wales) Act 2014.

These key policy drivers seek to support a holistic approach to enhancing wellbeing and preventing illness across Wales. With growing expertise and experiences of medical professionals, healthcare workers and practitioners in the arts, Dr Rogers aims to elucidate the wider causes of ill health by offering solutions that go beyond the medical. The All-Party Parliamentary Group for Health and Wellbeing (APPGAHW, 2014) endorsed the arts for the health and well-being of the Nation, chaired by Lord Howarth of Newport. Their 2-year research, evidence-gathering programme included discussions with patients, health and social care professionals, artists and arts administrators, academics, people in local government, ministers, other policymakers, and parliamentarians from both Houses of Parliament culminated in The Inquiry Report (2015-2017), Creative Health: The Arts for Health and Wellbeing (2nd Edition). Social Prescribing (SP) seen as a non-clinical intervention is defined in Wales as ‘connecting citizens to community support to better manage their health and wellbeing’. The SP model in Wales offers a holistic approach that is person-centred that integrates with statutory services across sectors (Rees et al., 2019; Wallace et al., 2021).The exploratory Research Paper examines SP, ‘Art-on-Prescription’ (AoP), in Wales, UK, identifying how levels of anxiety, depression and mental health problems may be managed by developing a creative mindset. General Practitioners, GPs dealing with patients who might have felt lost and powerless at challenging long-established problems, are now able to provide referrals to SP services helping patients to engage with them, motivating people to regain their mental health and well-being. Inevitably, research-based evidence is needed to justify public expenditure on art for health and wellbeing through SP. Helen Goodman, MP, APPGHWB (2014), argues that there is a cost-effective component to using the creative arts and culture in contrast to medicalising issues of mental health, loneliness, and isolation in the community. The Welsh Government have now committed within the Programme for Government 2021-2026 to introduce an all-Wales Framework (PHW,2022) to further support the roll-out of SP, as a key mechanism to further the wellbeing agenda in Wales, identifying the long-term outcomes that SP aims to influence.

By understanding these long-term outcomes, SP is seen to interface with:
(i) mental
(ii) physical and
(iii) social health and wellbeing agendas.

Subsequently there are operational interfaces between multiple agencies and professions, which support these agendas. In its scope and purpose SP is a relatively new concept (Morse et al., 2022). Dr Susy Rogers, investigating the critical success factors for the sustainability of SP AoP in Wales with the Team of Academics Professor Carolyn Wallace (Director, The Wales School for Social Prescribing Research, WSSPR), Professor Steven Smith and Dr Sarah Wallace, uses Group Concept Mapping (GCM) adopting GroupWisdomTM s/ware as a springboard for gathering data through online “Brainstorming” and Data Analysis where interesting insights are emerging.

Keywords:

Creativity, art-on-prescription, health, well-being, holistic therapies, mental health, dementia, social prescribing, Model for Social Prescribing.