Qualifications and training needs of social prescribing link workers: an explorative study

A social prescribing link worker is responsible for enabling and supporting individuals, by assessing their needs and co-producing solutions to make use of appropriate, local, non-clinical resources or interventions. Because the role is new, link workers might not have professional backgrounds in dealing with individuals with complex needs, which can affect their decision making for the referral of individuals to appropriate community assets to support their needs. The aim of this work was to explore link workers' level of education, and past and current training needs, and to ascertain how much link workers were willing to pay to access and complete training to improve their skill set.