Introduction
Social prescribing is an evidence-based initiative to promote health and wellbeing, predominantly in the UK. There is increasing interest to deliver social prescribing in Australia.
Connect Local aims to reduce loneliness, social isolation and depressive symptoms and improve holistic wellbeing through social prescribing, whereby a paid Community Connector supports older people ≥65 years old to access local activities/programs in a metropolitan Melbourne local government area. We describe the early-stage implementation of this evidence-based social connection program.
Methods
The Implementation Framework for Aged Care was used to develop and implement Connect Local, including codesign with older community members, health and social care providers and researchers. Observations, administrative data, meeting notes and interviews with these stakeholders captured information on Reach, Adoption, Feasibility, Acceptability, Appropriateness, Fidelity, and Sustainability of the intervention.

Results
At 12 months, raising awareness and listing available community services has been critical, yet time consuming, requiring ongoing dedicated time. It took ~6 months for Community Connectors to shape and adopt the program considering Feasibility, then deliver the program with Fidelity. Although Acceptability and Appropriateness is high, Reach is still limited with 106 participants engaged in the program. Recruitment for the effectiveness evaluation is slow due to survey tools focusing on deficits with participants preferring an asset rather than a deficit focus. Strategies are underway to address this.

Discussion/conclusion
Relationship building and continuous awareness raising is key to engaging key stakeholders. Deficit based evaluation tools for loneliness and social isolation are less acceptable to participants.