Helen Owen - Guest Speaker
On Friday 29th April we were very lucky to have a visit from Helen Owen. Helen was the Arts Development officer in Gloucestershire County Council when the successful Arts on Prescription project ‘Artlift’ began in 2007 and she spoke to us about the journey Artlift has taken and the main challenges and benefits of Arts on Prescription projects.
The meeting was held in Singleton hospital, there were about 20 people present including the Artscript learning group plus staff from Abertawe Bro Morganwg UHB who have an interest in Arts on Prescription.
How Artlift began
An enormously important factor to the successful beginning of Artlift was the commitment and enthusiasm of Dr Simon Olpher, a GP in Gloucestershire. Before Artilft began he was supporting “paint yourself better’ workshops in his GP surgery. It was him that contacted Helen Owen to set up what has become Artlift.
Phase one of Artlift in 2007 was a pilot programme to make the case, it was funding by the Arts council grants for the arts and involved 15artists in 15settings including GP surgeries and mental health units.
Phase two 2008-2011: The first year was funded through NHS charitable funds then Core Public health funding for 3 years. A steering group was set up and sessions were held mainly in GP surgeries.
Phase three since 2012 Artlift has been set up as a CIC charity. There have been more referrals since there has been a referrals officer in post. Patients are referred through a form which is signed by a healthcare professional, this acts as a risk assessment. Artlift is thought to save the NHS £255 per patient per term.
Challenges
1. Finding the right artists
The artists to led on Arts on Prescription projects need to be sensitive, have good people skills, maturity and a commitment to quality. In order to find the right artists for the job Artlift hold group interview days for short listed artists, this day includes exercises used by the Samaritans. These tasks help to weed out artists that may not have the right sensitivities and empathy to deal with some of the situations that may arise.
Once artists have been identified they are trained in safeguarding and mental health first aid and then well supported in their work through clinical supervision and peer support days where the artists come together.
2. Moving people on
An Artlift term currently runs for 8 weeks, once a client has completed one term they can then sign up for a second term, but what about after this?
Artlift support peer led ‘move on’ groups where they can continue to meet without the Artist leading the session. Its also important to continue to link up with GP’s and community connectors to sign post people to other groups.
Benefits
The benefits of Arts on Prescription are huge and Artlift have a lot of evidence to support this, both qualitative evidence from clients and quantitive evidence from academic studies. The main benefits for participants are pain relief and social benefits.
Qualitative evidence includes testimonies from clients, here is a link to some videos of case studies showing some of the individual experience of Artlift.
One way that Artlift collect quantitive data is with pre and post Artlift questionnaires using the Warwick and Edinburgh Health and Wellbeing scale. This data has been used in academic research to help evidence the benefits of the project.
Another benefit of Arts on Prescription is cost effectiveness. Dr Simon Olpher led a study following 90 patients who attended Artlift sessions. He found that the times the patients asked to see a consultant dropped by 36%, and hospital admissions dropped from 54 to 33. In monetary terms, these reductions are equivalent to £37k saved by the NHS.
Concluding thoughts from Helen
Find a champion in the health service to led on setting up a project.
Find the right artists and train them.
Use the existing evidence base to ‘sell’ Arts on Prescription to the health board.
Sum up of the day
It was a very informative and successful afternoon, and great to see so many faces in the room both from the arts sector and the health board. I think we all learnt a great deal about best practice for Arts on Prescription projects and will go away with many things to think about.
