With Me, Not For Me- Primary Care Community Links Practitioners putting people and communities at the heart of decision-making

The Links Worker Programme is built on seven Primary Care Team Capacities and five Links Approach objectives:

Primary Care Team Capacities:

Team Wellbeing                       

Shared Learning                       

Awareness                               

Intelligence                               

Signposting                              

Problem Solving

Network Building

Links Approach Objectives:

Adapting to Diagnosis

Living Well Day to Day

Facing Challenges

Navigating Services

Dying Well

Having a Community Links Practitioner (CLP) embedded within Primary Care enables General Practice to face outwards to their patient’s communities, having developed an appetite for social prescribing as they increasingly identified with wider social determinants of health, contributing to widening health inequalities for many years and greater demands; adopting the Links Approach Objectives to achieve the desired outcome people envisage from a social, non-medical perspective.

As a major conduit for General Practice, the CLP facilitates new partnerships with many community resources and organisation, Allied Health Professionals, Department of Work and Pensions (local Job Centres), social work, places of workshops, school and colleges, employers and social housing providers for example, to support people (patients) with their care pathways, allowing them to choose their journey, with support if needed to address what matters to them. By doing so, the CLP collaborates on personal designed system approach to address the persons concerns and what is preventing them from living well day-to-day based on their lived experience(s).

Links GP Practices appreciate when focusing on medical models of health, this doesn’t address presenting social issues that cause ill-health, but more is needed to not only put the person at the heart of the service, to enable systems to hear their voice, systems that listen to learn from the voice of experience, then have systems and processes in place to inform, build knowledge, upskill and provide safe spaces that will respect choice, then ensure people don’t continue life holding onto their unmet need.

Although GP Practices have always been at the heart of communities, they have been stand-alone services, built on generations of medical silos, purpose built to focus on science, with such huge workloads generated for greater demand with little resources or lacked capacity. The Links Worker Programme has generated interest from shared learning and good practice. The widening reach expands through the Deep End GP Steering group, local GP Clusters and city wide planning thus strengthening the workforce has been further enabled through shadowing and training opportunities for i.e. 2nd and 3rd year pharmacy students and medical student for varying clinical specialities year on year. Attached staff also have opportunities to shadow, local training and information sharing sessions are facilitated and Links GP Practices ring fence Protected Learning Time (PLTs)

Although Primary and Secondary Care are connected in many ways, i.e. IT pathways for patient information sharing (Portal), relationships have been distant and communication lends itself to a change in medication or patients not attending appointments, where multitasking specialists in family medicine, transform to administrators to manage their patient’s diaries and setting reminders. CLPs offset these diversions, often complicated invisible barriers to allow people to find their path and direct through own care, let's explore.