Connecting with nature has been proven to support your health and wellbeing. It can make you feel happier and even lower your blood pressure! ‘Green social prescribing’ is the phrase used to describe supporting you to take part in activities that bring you closer to nature. It can help you to manage long term conditions like high blood pressure, diabetes, anxiety and depression. Just spending time noticing nature out of a window, or even admiring a beautiful house plant can make improvements to your health and wellbeing. But green social prescribing aims to help you out of your house and into activities in the wider community. Things like outdoor craft sessions, gardening, fishing, helping with conservation work in the countryside, maintaining your local park, or even forest bathing and equine therapy!
At the moment in Derby and Derbyshire there is a pilot study to ‘test and learn’ about the possibilities of green social prescribing. Derby and Derbyshire were chosen by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs along with 6 other regions to look in more detail about how to make it work. In Derbyshire the project is called GreenSPring and runs until April 2023.
The GreenSPring team want to find out who would use green social prescribing, why, and what type of activities would be enjoyable. We have put together some questions to help us understand how people are spending time with nature, what barriers people face, and what is needed to overcome them. Please use the comment boxes provided to expand on your answers or to provide any additional information that you think may be relevant.
The information that you provide will be used to shape GreenSPring's work in Derby and Derbyshire. The survey can be completed anonymously but if you do share your contact details they will only be used GreenSPring project team, we won't share them with anyone else.
This survey should take no longer than 20 minutes.
You can click on this link to find out more information about the test and learn pilots.
(https://www.england.nhs.uk/personalisedcare/social-prescribing/green-social-prescribing/
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-sites-to-test-how-connecting-people-with-nature-can-improve-mental-health)
Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us.
The GreenSPring Team
This question requires an answer
1. Which region of Derbyshire do you live in? *