A new paper just published in BMJ Open has found that relatively few children under 18 are referred to social prescribing and this disparity may be increasing. More promisingly, those referred to social prescribing were more likely to live in deprived areas.

The authors used data from the most widely adopted social prescribing platform in the UK to describe the characteristics of over 52,500 children and young people referred to social prescribing across the UK in the last 9 years, and explored what social prescribing looked like for these young people.

They concluded that, given current findings, more work is needed to increase the reach of social prescribing for children and young people across the UK