Grow Well - A Realist Evaluation and Social Return on Investment (SROI) Analysis

Grow Well is part of Grow Cardiff, a charity that utilises an asset-based approach to help to transform people's lives through community gardening, supporting them to become more connected, healthier, empowered and joyful. While accessible to all, the team at Grow Cardiff seek to challenge urban inequalities, working with individuals who are disadvantaged or marginalised due to poverty or lack of opportunity. Developed in 2016, the Grow Well social prescribing project engages individuals with health issues to help them recover and thrive through therapeutic community growing. Referrals to the project's four sites in South West and South Cardiff (ACE/Dusty Forge Community Centre, Lansdowne Surgery, Riverside Health Centre and Grangetown Medical Practice) are primarily via healthcare professionals through a social prescribing pathway. Grow Cardiff's mission: “to inspire people to use community gardening not only to grow fantastic vegetables, herbs, trees, and flowers, but also to build caring and inclusive communities where everyone can thrive” In 2021, the Wales School for Social Prescribing Research (WSSPR) was commissioned to evaluate the Grow Well Project 1. As part of this evaluation, WSSPR developed a programme theory to understand how it works, for whom and to what extent, and developed a bespoke monitoring tool with recommendations for use in practice. Since the initial evaluation, Grow Cardiff has been using this tool to collect participation data. Here we report on phase two of the evaluation.