Cumbria CVS Green No 12 – February 2025
February 19, 2025
Welcome back to Cumbria CVS Green!
In our twelfth blog post, Sarah Penn, Health Partnership Support Officer at Cumbria CVS, looks at why nature is the best medicine, ahead of Social Prescribing Day on 19 March.
If you have any suggestions about what you’d like to see in our regular updates, let us know! Contact us by emailing info@cumbriacvs.org.uk
You can find our what we’re doing to minimise our environmental impact and find details of organisations supporting positive environmental action in Cumbria on our Climate Commitment page here
Catch up on our other blog posts here
Routes in to nature – Social Prescribing
‘Nature is the best medicine’
Hippocrates (the man with the oath)
I couldn’t have put it better myself – Hippocrates was clearly a very wise man. Having said that he did discover diabetes by drinking wee, so everyone has their limits.
Joking aside, the power of the natural world to heal, restore, soothe and comfort is something that pretty much everyone agrees on. Scientists can measure its effect on depression, on lung capacity, on pain with clever tests. Everyone else can go outside, or look out of a window, and find similar (if less rigorous) evidence of the how their mood and sense of wellbeing gets better.
You may or may not have come across the term ‘Social Prescribing’ or even ‘Green Social Prescribing’ (sometimes it’s even blue). If you haven’t, or have but are understandably baffled by it, it is a very fancy term for the way nature, community and activities can play a big role in health and wellbeing. Rather than being given a pill by the doctor to increase your mood, or alleviate your pain, you may be helped to access a range of activities in your area.
When these activities are nature and land-based it is known as ‘Green Social Prescribing’, when there is some water involved it becomes ‘Blue’ (not sure if some of Cumbria’s tidal estuaries got the memo about the colour palette). I don’t think anyone has invented any lava-based programmes of ‘Red Social Prescribing’ but give it time.
Green Social Prescribing
Green Social Prescribing can be a very big umbrella for all kinds of things – here are some categories you may recognise:
Growing activities – these can be anything from a small community garden or allotment, a home-based activity with a window-box or something structured like the mental health charity Growing Well. It can also be part of an affordable local food scheme as well or give people the skills to follow a career in gardening, landscaping or similar.
Growing Well – Mental health intervention charity, Cumbria
Walking/physical activities – these can be sessions or groups organised in the natural world – from parks, to town centres, or in the peaks of the Lake District. They combine nature with exercise to get maximum benefit. Sometimes this could be a resource like a leaflet or website, or information boards, which help you do activities without an organised event. The options are endless.
Ramblers Wellbeing Walks – Active Cumbria
Conservation – these have been a mainstay of volunteering and third sector activities for decades. Now the positive effects on the people, as well as the environment, are becoming more recognised. Whether it is dry-stone walling, bashing balsam or counting butterflies, these activities tend to be local, hands on and about caring for our immediate environment.
Volunteer with Cumbria Wildlife Trust | Cumbria Wildlife Trust
Climate activism – Closely related to the previous category, activism tends to combine local environmental care, with a global agenda. Not only do activists work to improve their immediate area, they also campaign to change behaviour and policies.
Cumbria Action for Sustainability – Cumbria’s climate change and sustainability charity
Anti Racism activism – This can overlap with ‘Green’ activities in a number of ways. Firstly, it may look at inequalities in the way people can access nature and promote activities for those who traditionally have been excluded. It may also look at the unequal impact of climate change on the global majority of Black and Brown people.
Anti Racist Cumbria – Anti Racist Cumbria
Art and Nature – Often nature-based activities are combined with other sorts of things, to help people get involved. This might involve poetry, music and dance and take some inspiration from nature, or take place in the natural world.
Home – Art Gene
Restoration – closely-related to conservation, this might take an old industrial site or wasteland and turn it back to nature, planting trees and encouraging wildlife to return. This can be a great way of giving people purpose, involving children and young people and transforming industrial areas such as coal mines.
A Wilder Walkmill — West Cumbria Rivers Trust
Tree-planting – this could be an off-shoot (pardon the pun) of Climate Activism, Conservation and Restoration, using the power of trees to offset the carbon in the atmosphere, reduce the risk of flooding, boost the economy and promote wellbeing. And for the more socially challenged of us, in the words of the novellist David Mitchell ‘ Trees are always a relief, after people.’
Raise: Cumbria Community Forest | Sustainable Woodland Creation To Improve Cumbria
Link Workers
So whether you call it social prescribing or not, there are plenty of routes into nature activities in Cumbria. Some may need more help than others to access these activities and this is where link workers come in. Lots of different people and organisations can do this link work and here are a few examples:
Council-based Health and Wellbeing Coaches (also known as HAWCs) – don’t be alarmed if someone sends you to a HAWC. It is not a falcon, it is someone who works at the council coaching someone who wants to make changes in their behaviour.
Request support to improve your health and wellbeing | Cumberland Council
Health and wellbeing service | Westmorland and Furness Council
GP-based social prescribers, care-coordinators and health coaches – these can have many different names but essentially they can all spend time with you and support you to access activities. Contact your GP to find out what they offer.
Voluntary sector link workers – these may be carer support coordinators, Age UK case workers, Barnardo’s Children and Young People social prescribers and many many more. They can spend time with you and help you overcome anything stopping you taking part in activities.
Carers Support Cumbria
Cumbria LINK – Young People’s Social Prescribing Service | Barnardo’s
The term might be new to you, but Green Social Prescribing is as old as the hills. The power of nature has always been recognised as a healing tool. People have always connected and supported other people to take part.
SO don’t be put off by the words – it can mean all of the myriad ways to get involved described above and probably many more I haven’t thought of. It can be structured and with defined outcome measures, but equally it could be a walk or a patch of soil to grow in.
If you want the know more about the landscape of Green Social Prescribing in Cumbria and beyond contact the Health Partnerships Team: sarah.penn@cumbriacvs.org.uk
Other organisations:
Nature-based ‘social prescribing’ organisations in Cumbria
Groundwork NE and Cumbria – North East & Cumbria – Groundwork
Growing Well – Growing Well – Mental health intervention charity, Cumbria
West Cumbria Rivers Trust – West Cumbria Rivers Trust – Caring For West Cumbrian Rivers & Lakes
Eden Rivers Trust – edenriverstrust.org.uk
Lune Rivers Trust – Home – Lune Rivers Trust
South Cumbria Rivers Trust – Home – SCRT
Cumbria Wildlife Trust – Home | Cumbria Wildlife Trust
Raise: Cumbria’s Community Forest – Raise: Cumbria Community Forest | Sustainable Woodland Creation To Improve Cumbria
Watchtree – Watchtree Nature Reserve | A wildlife haven and community asset for all
Mind Over Mountains – Mind Over Mountains and Green Social Prescribing
Useful links
Toolkit: nhs-green-social-prescribing-toolkit.pdf
Evidence: Evidence – National Academy for Social Prescribing | NASP
Government policy: NHS England » Green social prescribing
Training and Events
Embedding an environmental response into your work
Wednesday 26 February 2025, Online. Join NPC for this free inspiring event where they’ll help you plan your response to the environmental crises. This session is designed to be relevant to all charity missions and levels of experience with environmental issues.
This event will help you to:
- Explore the connections between your mission and the environmental crises
- Consider how your programme design and organisational strategy may need to change
- Plan for next steps to embed this work further
Using tools, resources, and case studies from the Everyone’s Environment Pathway, and with time for Q&A and peer learning, this hands-on training session will give you the knowledge and confidence to take action on the social impacts of the environmental crises.
Climate Fresk
Tuesday 11 March, Carlisle. Our friends at Cumbria Action for Sustainability are running their Climate Fresk course at our office in Carlisle.
The session covers the fundamentals of climate change by using pictorial cards taken from the latest IPCC report, to map the causes and effects of climate change.
For more info and to book, click here
Climate & Carbon Literacy
24 April & 1 May, Online. Get the latest climate science facts and grow your understanding of carbon footprints to build your knowledge of what we can all do to help restore the balance.
CAfS’s award winning Climate & Carbon Literacy course will leave you with the ability and motivation to reduce emissions on an individual, community and organisational basis.
News and Information
Cumbria Climate Assembly
Last month, 10,000 randomly selected households received an invitation letter to the Cumbria Climate Assembly. The Assembly will bring people with diverse views from all walks of life together to discuss climate change and explore what can be done about it. If an invite dropped through your letterbox, then you’re invited, so to register your interest, type in the link in the letter.
£90k Community Grants Awarded to Tackle Climate Change in Cumbria
Community groups across the county have been awarded a share of over £90,000 of National Lottery funding through Zero Carbon Cumbria’s recent round of Community Climate Grants.
These will deliver a diverse range of projects to help tackle the causes of climate change and bring multiple benefits to their local area.
Trump pledges to overturn Biden’s progress on climate change
Newly sworn-in US President Donald Trump has pledged to overturn the previous administration’s climate-focused policy, promising once again to focus on drilling for the oil which is largely responsible for the world’s life-threatening warming.
Included in his calls for a ‘return to common sense’, Trump declared a national energy emergency, tying energy costs to inflation. He said that America would be a manufacturing nation, stating that the country has the “largest amount of oil and gas of any country on Earth.”
This article from the Independent looks at what this will mean.
Most charities do not measure their carbon footprint, research finds
Around two-thirds of charities do not measure their carbon footprint, according to a new report on voluntary organisations’ environmental, social and governance (ESG) progress.
The research, by sector leaders’ umbrella body ACEVO and consultancy Eastside People, found that most charities do not have an ESG strategy and that their progress on environmental concerns lags behind social and governance ones.
Fewer than one-in-20 charities that responded said they had a holistic, fully integrated ESG strategy.
Environmental charity sector still lacks racial diversity, study shows
Racial diversity in the environmental charity sector remains “substantially” below the UK workforce average, according to new research.
Some 4.5% of staff in the environmental charity sector identify as people of colour (POC) and other racially or ethnically minoritised groups compared to 16% of the UK national workforce, the annual Racial Action for the Climate Emergency (RACE) report revealed recently.
The report, the UK’s largest analysis of the racial diversity of the environmental charity and funder sector, surveyed 161 environmental charities and represented over 28,600 employees this year.
Energy Efficiency Sharematch
Access match funding support to invest in greener ways of operating your community business. Delivered by Co‑operatives UK and Crowdfunder, funded by Access – The Foundation for Social Investment.
With the climate crisis and high fuel costs, community businesses are seeking ways to decarbonise their operations and reduce spending. The new Energy Efficiency Sharematch fund has been launched to support with this.
The £250,000 pilot fund supports co-operative and community benefit societies in England to raise capital via community shares to pay for measures that reduce their energy bills and carbon footprint.
SIB estimates £429 million will be needed to help community buildings upgrade to EPC C standard
The Energy Secretary, Ed Miliband, recently announced that the Government intends to raise the minimum Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) standard of rented domestic buildings to C by 2030.
Currently, over 50% of community buildings in England fall below EPC C rating. In the most deprived areas this figure is even higher, meaning this regulation risks worsening regional inequalities. Without significant acceleration in making improvements, community groups could lose access to buildings, services may close, and charities could find themselves unable to generate revenue.
This research paper by Social Investment Business (SIB) outlines why making this investment is so crucial and estimates the cost of making the improvements needed.
