Forum Talk: Blue Social Prescribing: Removing barriers to access
Speaker: Maggy Blagrove, Founder and Director, Open Minds Active CIC
Abstract: The work of Open Minds Active is focussed on breaking down barriers to those less visible in blue spaces, particularly in urban settings. This presentation talks about how our community led approach empowers participants in our wild swimming for wellbeing initiative.
Open Minds Active is a social impact organisation working in and around Bristol in the South-West. Our purpose is to strengthen mental health and wellbeing within communities, widen access and create opportunities for excluded citizens. Our wild swimming for wellbeing is a blue social prescribing project that builds a diverse and inclusive community of people who benefit from connecting with nature and each other in the outdoors to reduce isolation, support wellbeing and foster positive mental health. Now in our 4th year, we were one of the first blue social prescribing project of its kind in the UK and have established a comprehensive 6 week facilitated programme of sessions that empower participants with the knowledge and skills around acclimatisation, swimming in different bodies of water, cold water safety, breathing and mindfulness techniques. Building confidence and friendships is the foundation of our work, enabling people to self-manage and support each other. We run 4 intakes each year, but also offer a year-round weekly drop in, so people can continue to be part of a community and the wider support network. We focus specifically on health inequalities for those living with long term mental and/or physical health conditions from low socio-economic areas and from ethnically diverse backgrounds. We break down barriers to access which can include cultural, lack of transport, lack of money, low confidence, long term disability or illness.
Anxiety and Depression rank as the top conditions affecting our population in Bristol, closely followed by painful conditions. We work collaboratively with referral partners and community organisations to prioritise participants from underserved and vulnerable groups in order to reduce social inequalities for those accessing mental and physical health services. We predominantly work with women from low-income backgrounds and around half of those are from the refugee and asylum seeker community. Our staff and volunteers are representative of the communities we serve and understand the barriers to access. For many women of colour whom we support, not being able to swim confidently or in many cases at all was a huge barrier to participation. We therefore set up a learn to swim project alongside to address this issue and this feeds into our wild swimming project each year enabling us to work with a diverse group of women. On our wild swimming for wellbeing initiative, we work with around 80 women each year but our but wider impact that indirectly benefits families and wider communities is 300+.
