The three personalised care roles
Three roles often work together to deliver personalised care: Social Prescribing Link Workers, Health and Wellbeing Coaches and Care Co-ordinators. Where all three exist locally, knowing the differences makes referrals to the right person more accurate, and reduces the risk of duplication. In countries where the personalised care workforce is still developing, these distinctions are still useful for service design.
Quick comparison
| Social Prescribing Link Worker | Health and Wellbeing Coach | Care Co-ordinator | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Core question | What matters to you? | How do you want to manage your health? | What's the plan and who's doing what? |
| Focus | Connecting to community-based support to meet practical, social, emotional needs | Behaviour change and self-management of health | Coordinating care across professionals |
| Typical contacts | 6–12 sessions over 3 months | Multiple sessions of focused coaching | Variable — case-by-case |
| Strength | Time, breadth, community knowledge | Coaching skill, evidence-based behaviour change | Systems navigation, multi-professional liaison |
| Helps when person needs | Loneliness, isolation, social/financial/practical needs | Lifestyle change, supported self-management | Multiple services to talk to each other |
Where they overlap
All three roles share core personalised care skills. They all:
- have time
- listen for what matters to the person
- work with people across multiple sessions
- record and share information appropriately.
Where the boundaries get fuzzy
In small teams or where a role isn't fully recruited, work can spill across boundaries. That's not always wrong — but it's worth being honest about. The programme distinguishes the three roles because trying to do all three jobs at once usually means doing none of them well.
How they work together
- A clinician identifies that a person needs more than the clinical room can offer.
- A Care co-ordinator maps where the person is across services and who's involved.
- A Health and Wellbeing Coach works with the person on a specific behaviour change goal.
- A Social Prescribing Link Worker builds a longer relationship around what matters to the person and connects them to community.
In practice, the three roles weave around each particular person depending on need.
Read more
- & programme guidance on personalised care roles
- The competency framework — applicable to , with related frameworks emerging for the wider personalised care team.