Green Social Prescribing and Nature, Food and Friendship

GREEN SOCIAL PRESCRIBING, August 2024 to July 2025.

Our ‘Green Social Prescribing’ sessions that ran between 2024 and 2025 were part of a national initiative to promote good mental health and wellbeing with exposure to green and blue spaces. We at Welcome House were funded by Hey Smile Foundation, to conduct outdoor activity and promote experience of natural surroundings. From August 2024, Tracey and Sharifa took participants out on two walks a month in a different location every time. We always finished our walk by eating a meal together. We found that fresh air and exercise in the company of other people, followed by sitting together in the relaxed setting of a meal and continuing the conversations begun on the walk solidified our small community and provided a boost to wellbeing and mental health.

We had brilliant feedback from our participants, including: The weather was cold but bright. We were walking, talking to other people, eating together. I enjoyed my day so much. Another said: I’m feeling good. We visited new place with bees, flowers, pizza. My friends were together, and I appreciate this project to help me.

Kofi Smiles from BBC Radio Humberside accompanied us on a walk to Rooted in Hull on a cold day in November, he interviewed some of our participants and said he thoroughly enjoyed his day.

We walked on river paths, parks and beaches; city streets and alleyways tangled by brambles and waist-high grass. Sometimes urban nature feels as beautiful as open fields. We also free ranged on Beverley Westwood on a glorious day, and the city farm in East Hull. Our pre-Christmas trip to York could have been blighted by several cancelled buses home, making it a very long day, but it didn’t dampen anyone’s spirits. The group just loved being out together.

Our first walk of 2025 was in the haunting landscape of the Humber Estuary, saturated in mist and serenaded by the sound of a fog horn.  We walked on Victoria Dock on a blazing February day and visited all the local beaches, parks and commons in all weathers but miraculously, we had a lot of sunshine.

NATURE, FOOD and FRIENDSHIP, January through March 2026. This project, funded by NHS Health Stars, was inspired by our original Green Social Prescribing sessions.

We recruited more than forty new participants throughout the three months of our Nature, food and friendship (NFF) project we have taken more than forty participants on walks in ‘green’ and ‘blue’ surroundings, followed by a meal in the company of the group. Feedback from our participants has been overwhelmingly positive. It never ceases to amaze and humble me how much difference a feeling of community and being together out in nature seems to make to their lives.

Our project was not only centred around walking in nature and eating together, but on the ‘friendship’ aspect. We feel it important to have two walk leaders who are more than that to the participants. We made a dedicated effort to imbue them with a sense of worth and wellbeing, using active listening and positive affirmation. We make them feel valued and cared for. With around ten participants on each walk, it takes two of us to give that attention. The attention and encouragement pay off in their lives outside the walking project, with several of our participants becoming involved in volunteering.

We anticipated improved mental and physical health benefits to our service users and that we would boost their sense of emotional wellbeing. These effects have been incontrovertibly demonstrated by their written feedback after each walk experience.

We expected to help raise their self-worth and happiness levels and to lower their sense of stress and anxiety. Participants have constantly expressed that they feel ‘happy’ and they ‘loved’ their experience on the NFF walks. Many of our NFF participants have since become volunteers at Welcome House, which we think proves that their self-worth and confidence has been raised. This is likely in turn to make it easier for them to integrate into wider society in the long run.

We felt this may lessen impact on the NHS. Having a higher sense of self worth and happiness means the participants are far less likely to have felt the need to seek medical help for conditions such as sadness and depression. On our walks we have practiced simple forms of mindfulness such as breathing techniques and stretching, participants have thrown themselves into these activities meaningfully.  I have found it moving to witness the physical effects on participants of performing these exercises together. Sparkling eyes and dropped shoulders, more comfortable breathing, a greater bonding within the group.

We have seen their sense of community strengthened as they make friends amongst themselves and gained confidence in interacting with members of the wider community. Taking public transport, learning the etiquette of bus queues and how to talk to bus drivers and other passengers will in turn benefit the wider community because our participants will feel supported to integrate more successfully. Their enhanced confidence will make it more likely that they can successfully access services and apply to work, if they are in a position to do so.