The Data Challenge Explained
A model built on collaboration, run on disconnected systems
Social prescribing depends on several organisations working together around one person, often a GP practice, a local charity, a housing provider, and a wellbeing service, all in the same case. In practice, that collaboration is frequently held together by email threads, spreadsheets, and phone calls, rather than any shared system. Referrals arrive through multiple channels and in inconsistent formats. Case notes are duplicated across organisations. And when someone moves between services, their history often doesn't move with them.
This isn't a new observation. Reviews of social prescribing services have repeatedly flagged data sharing and referral tracking as some of the biggest practical barriers to consistent delivery, alongside workforce capacity and funding.
The evidence problem
The other pressure point is proving impact. Commissioners and integrated care boards increasingly want outcomes data, not case studies: reduced GP attendance, improved wellbeing scores, sustained engagement with community activities. For many services, gathering that evidence still means a manual exercise ahead of each funding review, pulling figures together from whatever records happen to exist.
That creates a tension. Link workers are meant to spend their time with people, not on data entry, yet the funding that keeps the service running increasingly depends on being able to demonstrate results clearly and quickly.
Where case management systems fit in
This is the gap that dedicated case management platforms, including Charitylog, are designed to address. Rather than adapting a generic CRM, Charitylog was built around how voluntary and community organisations actually work, and social prescribing services use it in a fairly consistent way:
- A single case record that follows a person across their journey, rather than separate notes held by each organisation involved.
- Referral tracking from the point a GP, hospital, or partner organisation makes contact through to case closure, so referrals have visible status rather than sitting in an inbox.
- Outcomes recording built into everyday casework, so wellbeing measures and other indicators are captured as they happen rather than reconstructed later.
- Permission-based data sharing, allowing partner organisations to see what's relevant to their part of the person's care without exposing everything.
What this means for the sector
None of this removes the underlying pressures on social prescribing, funding constraints and workforce capacity chief among them. But it does address one of the more fixable problems: the amount of link worker and management time spent piecing together information that should already exist in one place.
As integrated care systems continue to push for better data sharing across health and social care, services that already have a structured record of referrals, casework, and outcomes are likely to find that easier to demonstrate than those still working from spreadsheets. For a model built entirely on joined-up support, having joined-up data behind it is, increasingly, part of the job.
