poverty and health are inextricably linked if you've got a lower income you
will not be able to eat healthily you'll not be able to heat your house you'll
not be able to travel it has a massive impact on your physical and emotional
and mental health and well-being I think in health in in medicine we are
now increasingly aware of the fact their health is socially determined the
evidence base for that is overwhelming and so that is increasingly becoming
part of our role as GPS particularly in poorer areas is to ask about people's
money issues so the welfare age service deals worth a high proportion of clients
who claim sickness or disability benefits at one point when we looked the
number of clients or the proportion of client service 74% of those access no
service so we felt that there was a need for potential service redesign and
looking to see whether there was a better we have actually reaching those
clients rather than just the traditional ways where clients came to our service
looking for help worth or benefits we knew there were a number of issues being
raised with in general practice which general practitioners couldn't do with
directly we were getting a lot of referrals to advise agencies from these
practices so it seemed sensible to locate the services together and that's
when welfare race advisors started to be collocated or embedded within general
practices well we're now very fortunate in that we have a welfare advisor as
part of our health care team and so we know whenever we identify a welfare
problem we will speak with a welfare advisor and often just book the patient
directly in with the expert so the advisors offer a fuel casework service
but that can include any sort of benefit that they may be in a filter and can
include disability benefits as well as means-tested benefits such as income
support or tax credits or universal trader base within the GP practices were
able to build up good relationships with the medical staff and we have a good
working relationship with a known I know GP practice with them we're able to
access medical records with client authorization and that in it enables us
when were assisting clients and advising them on any benefits they may be
entitled to that would come in at it from our experience and our perspective
I'm not relying on medical staff trying to interpret what is required aim to
meet the benefit criteria so one further advantage of having a welfare advisor as
part of the healthcare team is the educational benefit that we get not that
we've become experts in welfare rights but it does mean that we have someone
who can educate us and this is never changing field so we can actually give
some information to patients the difference between I reach and an
embedded model is that the adviser in this case becomes part of the practice
team so they're fully integrated within the practice they're able to attend
practice meetings they have you know a dialogue with ongoing dialogue for the
practice staff they can talk about individual patients and what the
patient's could say they can access the medical records of the patient which in
turn then cuts down the time for the advisor the GP and from the patient's
perspective it seems that they're getting an integrated and seamless
service for us as a practice we've noticed a real reduction in our workload
as GPS because I no longer have to write Appeals letters I no longer have to
actually supply supporting evidence for people's appeals and claims and things
like that because all of that is dealt with by our in-house welfare adviser
patients what we know is that they find a lot better than having to see
access a traditional advice service where you're walking through the door of
a building where people only go if they've got problems
so what a lot of people say is they find that stigmatizing whereas if they access
advice within doctors practice then the rapport is that there is no
stigmatization whatsoever because you may be going in to the doctor's practice
for a variety of reasons well I think that the benefits we find the patients
one is the direct benefit in terms of enabling them to access an income and
often to help with their accommodation but also it then means that that patient
is often empowered and can then start to look after themselves more and start to
look at other issues in their lives which when they feel so defeated by a
welfare system that is so difficult that is impossible