Since I spoke at the Propagating Green Therapies Conference in October about, amongst other things, how we have employed Garden Therapy Workers in Tonbridge, I’ve been contacted several times about how this works. So, to help others who may want to follow this model I thought it would be helpful to create a summary document to try and explain it.

In a nutshell it’s a way of using NHS resources in England to pay the salaries of staff for Green or Blue Therapies. I know there are many different views and takes on what constitutes a Green Therapist/Garden Therapy worker/STH Practitioner, and I’m not going to dwell on these definitions. The main intention here is simply to highlight a pragmatic means of getting away from having to source charitable funds to pay their salaries.

In 2018 the NHS England Long Term Plan encouraged groups of Practices to collaborate – sharing skills and expertise, and clubbing together to provide services for their locality populations. This was through the formation of Primary Care Networks (PCNs).

As part of this arrangement NHS money was made available for the PCNS (not the Practices) to make use of extra staff to help provide services to their patients. This scheme is called the Additional Roles Reimbursement Scheme (ARRS). The NHS has defined the titles of these roles and their salary scales. Examples include Clinical Pharmacists, Paramedics, and Social Prescribing Link Workers.

So, far away the majority of GP Practices in England are now part of PCNs. And these PCNs have been looking for ways not to lose out of ARRS monies as they become available.

What we’ve done in Tonbridge – where we have started NHS Garden Therapy from scratch, is employ two of the Social Prescribing Link Workers, to provide Gardening Therapy for our patients.

It’s a bit of a work-around, and the title doesn’t really do justice to the skill-set that we advertised for when we employed them, but it’s proving to be a reliable and sustainable way of getting monies from the NHS to do this important work.

(Just to complicate matters, we in Tonbridge have a 3^rd party Charity called Involve which acts as the employer for all our ARRS staff. This is simply because our particular PCN’s legal structure means we are not able to employ them directly).

In Tonbridge, as a PCN, we set up our Garden Therapy from scratch. However, if there are established Gardens (Charities or Social Enterprises) that want to try and get support in this way, then I would strongly encourage them to approach their local GP Surgeries to see if their PCNs are interested in providing Green or Blue Therapies. Then they can release funds via the ARRS scheme in this way to pay for the relevant therapists. If they are already being employed on a salaried or sessional basis by the gardens, then the PCNs could apply for ARRS monies in the same way that we did – and then advertise for the existing staff to apply for the roles. This then takes the financial burden of their employment off the Garden/Charity itself.

The people with the clout at the PCNs are the Clinical Directors, usually a lead GP in one of the participating practices. They are the people to approach. By all means show them this document to explain the context.

Meanwhile, I’ve been lobbying NHS England to add Garden Therapist/STH Practitioner to the official ARRS list, in order that this work-around might not be necessary in future.

To my knowledge this approach is not possible in Northern Ireland, Scotland or Wales, as they have separate systems overseeing Primary Care provision in their devolved NHS.

If you want further advice on this, or have additional questions, then please feel free to contact me through the website or a DM.

Richard