Signposting services in the UK: enhanced support or service diversion for people with health and social care needs: a rapid realist synthesis

Purpose

In the UK signposting services can be developed as enhanced support for people with health and social care needs or service diversion to help primary and urgent care services manage their workload. This review considers these two conflicting purposes.

Design/methodology/approach

The review used a realist approach, initial searches to identify theory; we then selected 22 publications and extracted programme theories, from which we developed questions from three viewpoints: the service user, the front-line service provider and the commissioner. A rich sample of studies were found from purposive searching. To optimise the applicability of synthesis findings predominantly UK studies were included.

Findings

Users value signposting service that understand their needs, suggest a range of options and summarise potential actions. People with complex health and social care needs generally require extended time/input from signposting services. Front-line providers require initial and ongoing training, support/supervision, good knowledge of available services/resources and the ability to match users to them and a flexible response. Commissioned signposting services in England are diverse making evaluation difficult.

Originality/value

Meaningful evaluation of signposting services requires greater clarity around roles and service expectations. Signposting services alone fulfil the needs of a small number of users due to the unreconciled tension between efficient (transactional) service provision and effective (relational) service provision. This is underpinned by competing narratives of whether signposting represents diversion of inappropriate demand from primary care and other urgent care services or improved quality of care through a joined-up response encompassing health, social care and community/voluntary services.