MJ Awards nominations - Project Joy

For many the GP is often the first place that they turn when they face issues within their lives. 

However, of those visiting the GP, circa 20 per cent to 50 per cent have a health and wellbeing challenge that can’t be addressed by their doctor or medicine alone.

Not only is this placing massive pressure on the limited GP resources available it’s also leading to delays in getting people the help they need.

This has a knock on effect on other services, with those suffering from problems like mobility, loneliness, social isolation and low level mental health issues more likely to call on statutory services like Adult Social Care, acute hospital and community nursing. 

Working together

Recognising this needed to be addressed, the council worked with a range of partners including GPs, Social Prescribers, health and wellbeing providers and service users to better understand the issues.

These included a lack of awareness of the full range of services available in the area, and no easy way for different partners to connect and intra refer between services for best effect. 

As a result of these conversations the council partnered up with IT start-up Pungo to look at digital solutions to this challenge, leading to the creation of an innovative new social prescription App called JOY.

The initial development involved bringing together six Primary Care Networks, 12 GP surgeries, a community nursing provider, several branches of the Council and a large and diverse voluntary sector to make sure the solution met the needs of a diverse range of users. 

Funded through the Digital Cities initiative and Better Care Fund, the JOY app has been designed to better connect residents in need with the best health and wellbeing service to offer them support.

The app also helps improve the referral process with services able to quickly cross refer to others to make sure the right solution is found for the individual involved. 

Better insights and targeting

In addition to this, the app also links directly into GP systems meaning it can be used as a Social Prescriber case management tool, with insight into who is and isn’t using services and a better understanding of any service gaps.

This information can be used to help target resources as well as improving future commissioning of services. 

Launched two years ago with six services on offer, the JOY app has grown to offer 126 services and more continues to expand.

This includes services from Adult Social Care, Sport &and Leisure, the council's community nursing provider and a growing list for the voluntary sector. 

In the last year Project JOY has supported more than 3,000 service users within the borough and has seen a 23 per cent reduction in GP appointments.

There has also been a 90 per cent acceptance rate for referrals made, with the average referral now only taking four minutes to make compared to the 14 minutes before the app. 

'Exemplar partnership working'

Cllr Stephen Conway, leader of the council and executive member for housing, said: “This is a true exemplar of partnership working which has allowed us to work collaboratively, taking a problem and turning it from a local solution into a real success story that has the potential to help thousands of people for years to come.

"Since its launch with a local pilot, JOY is now supporting 850 GP practices across England, with a predicted 140,000 people supported via the app this year alone.”  

One of our Social Prescribers said: “One of the main things that stands out to me is the ability to filter the information and pull out really specific data. It allows me to contact a group of people who, for example, have suffered a bereavement.

"I can then send them all information about a support group or a newsletter in one go. I find this so useful and it's something I couldn't ever do before.

“Joy has made a real difference to how I make referrals. What's brilliant about Joy is that it's all there in one place. No more flipping back and forth between systems and having to type the same information over and over.”