“If a lettuce does not grow well, you don’t blame the lettuce.” – Thích Nhất Hạnh. After working three decades in mental health, it is confronting to see child and adolescent outcomes worsening despite advances in treatments. We need to question what is happening to our youth. As Johann Hari (Lost Connections, Stolen Focus) and Jonathan Haidt (The Anxious Generation) remind us, disconnection is central to this crisis. If disconnection is the illness, then connection must be the medicine. Social prescribing is often understood as a downstream action – linking someone already in distress to an art group, a walking club, or a yoga class. But what if social prescribing could be upstream? What if it wasn’t only a referral, but a redesign of the very spaces and communities in which we live? The Base is a multidisciplinary community centre: consulting rooms alongside a café, theatre with movie screen, yoga and art studios, and leafy courtyards. Services span from psychiatry and allied health to nature-based and adventure therapies, dance and yoga, parent groups, and LGBTIQ+ supports. Partnerships with Headspace, restorative justice initiatives, youth charities, and local farms extend the network of belonging. Examples of recovery stories; A 17-year-old with ASD/ADHD, once heavily medicated, now thrives at a farm building fences and friendships. A 23-year-old woman with suicidality and depression was linked with a yoga therapist which inspired her to become a yoga teacher. Our next step is a social prescribing hub: link workers embedded in community, supervised by clinicians, with NFP funding and an alcohol-free café/bar anchoring connection. This presentation shares the story of shaping a service and ideas to shifting social prescribing upstream. How can we foster true social climate change for people to thrive?