About the Community Links Worker Programme

Community Links Workers (CLWs) work with individuals to improve their health and wellbeing by offering help to people facing issues such as poverty, loneliness and isolation, housing, debt, and abuse.

The Community Links Worker Programme (LWP) began in 2014 as a Scottish Government funded pilot programme that aimed to explore how primary care teams can support people to live well in their communities, and was delivered as a partnership between the Health and Social Care Alliance Scotland (the ALLIANCE) and GPs at the Deep End within Glasgow.

It brought together the fields of primary care and community development with CLWs joining existing primary care teams in seven Deep End GP practices in Glasgow, and was to reflect a culture of person-centeredness, coproduction and the equalising of relationships between healthcare providers and people receiving a service.

A series of reports by The Scottish Deep End Project described the impact that living in complex social circumstances can have on people’s health. The ALLIANCE worked together with practices to implement the programme and took insight from GPs working with deprived populations as to measures that could address the challenges facing them: GPs identified that a high proportion of consultations were largely being driven by the experience of social adversity, especially poverty and financial problems as well as violence, addictions, housing and many other difficulties.

The LWP has expanded over the years and is now well established with ALLIANCE CLWs embedded in 80 GP practices in Glasgow as well as 10 Community Links Workers covering 16 practices in West Dunbartonshire, 3 CLWs in Trussell Trust foodbanks, and 2 thematic CLWs supporting asylum seeking and homeless populations. We also have 2 Energy Efficiency Outreach Workers in partnership with SGN, supporting to tackle fuel poverty. As well as the direct benefit that CLWs bring to individuals referred, they work as part of multi-disciplinary teams to develop the links approach and have become an integral part of primary care teams, alleviating the pressure on other services.

Since 2014, the ALLIANCE Community Links Worker Programme (LWP) has been supporting thousands of individuals in some of our most deprived communities with social issues. In 2023, the ALLIANCE CLWs received around 11,000 referrals and 40,000 appointments. Each referral made to a links worker helps reduce GP’s workload and support people’s individual needs.

We are always keen to develop links with local resources and organisations.  If you have any questions or would like to know more about the Programme, please get in touch by emailing clw@alliance-scotland.org.uk

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