Findings and Recommendations

1. A range of activities were developed and provided during the pilot from Nordic walking, seated exercise to walking and progressive pedalling. 
2. There was a total of 6,183 visits during the Social Prescribing Pilot, with 4,707 visits to Chopwell Wood and 1,476 to Thames Chase. 
3. 353 participants got involved at both sites. 
4. Five focus groups with 35 participants highlighted the important impact of the activities on people’s mental wellbeing. The activities were also important in terms of the social connections people made with others. The project gave people more confidence in becoming physically active and sustaining or increasing their activity levels. The support of Active Forest Coordinators and activity leaders helped to motivate people to participate on a regular basis. 
5. There were lower scores for participants, for levels of happiness, life satisfaction, and feelings associated with whether the things people do in their life are worthwhile, than the national average for the England population. This is to be expected as Social Prescribing projects aim to reach these types of audiences. 
6. In terms of mental health participants in the pilot experienced reduced mental wellbeing compared to a United Kingdom population sample. As outlined above this is to be expected and one of the aims of the FGITF pilot was to improve participants wellbeing. However, there were too few results to show any quantitative changes in people who participated in the programme, due to the challenges of collecting data from people facing a range of health and social problems. But, the qualitative did provide substantial evidence of improvements. 
7. Respondents to the participant survey, follow-on survey, and group evaluation forms were very satisfied that the following goals had been met for participants: socially interacting, reducing social isolation, enjoying nature, contributing to mental wellbeing, and being physically active. 
8. The Pilot participants from Chopwell Wood tended to be older, were more likely to have an illness of impairment and were from more deprived areas than the participants of the wider Active Forests Programme. There are too few results from Thames Chase to comment on this.