“Any initiative that links social wellbeing and healthcare to social isolation would be very welcome”
- Written by: Rhona Hotchkiss — HMP Greenock — Governor
- Published: 5th June 2018
We asked Rhona for her views at our Action: The 2nd Health and Social Care Integration Event.
At our Annual Conference, Action: The 2nd Health and Social Care Integration Event on 4 June 2018, we interviewed a range of delegates to monitor their opinions on the conference and their thoughts on how to implement action in health and social care.
Rhona was one of our nine speakers at our event this year, and was admired by attendees for highlighting the intersection between long term conditions and Scotland’s prison population. Her talk emphasised action through the necessity for providing a home and income for everyone.
We asked Rhona:
Why is action needed in health and social care?
Rhona: People who come into prison have some of the poorest health profiles in our society. They are on average ten years older than their chronological age because of the impact of their life experiences and so on. I think that people coming out of prison need to be more obviously included in the system. They do quite well in prison because that have good access to healthcare. When they get out, sometimes the chaos of their lives takes over again and their health falls by the wayside and a lot of it is to do with social isolation and I know that a lot of people are very lonely when they get out of prison so any initiative that links social wellbeing and healthcare to social isolation would be very welcome.
If you were to prioritise one thing (and money and resource was no object) to action what would it be and how would it improve health and social care?
Rhona: Housing, it would be housing. I think the single most important thing that we can do for people is to give them a secure tenancy and somewhere safe to live, that they can call their own and somewhere where they don’t have to worry about falling behind with their rent, somewhere they wont get thrown out of. There is a lot of great work going on just now by the prison service and the agencies that work with us, housing agencies, Scottish Government and so on, but it really should be total priority for people coming out of prison.
You can also watch Rhona’s interview on the ALLIANCE YouTube channel (this link will take you away from our website).
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