Blogs

In this blog National Voices CEO Charlotte Augst and Director of Personalised Care at NHS England, James Sanderson share reflections on the new National Voices report Changing lives, changing places, changing systems: Making progress on social prescribing. The report sets out an agenda for action to ensure that NHS England’s investment in social prescribing delivers change for people, places and systems.

"Courage calls to courage everywhere and its voice cannot be denied."
Millicent Fawcett, suffragist 

Living in poverty can have a huge impact on every area of someone’s life. In January 2022 the national older people’s charity Independent Age released their new report Poverty in later life, exploring whether people past state pension age enter or exit poverty, and why.

On 8 February the NHS published the plan for tackling the backlog of “elective” care built up during the COVID-19 pandemic. The term elective seems to me to be a bit misleading, as though this is care you might elect, or choose, to have. Something which might be in some way optional. What we are in fact talking about is care that is essential, but not urgent or an emergency. What impact does the use of this term have?