Grants of up to £75,000 are available to special schools and colleges for children and young people with special educational needs. Grants are awarded towards capital costs such as new buildings, the refurbishment of existing buildings and equipment. The funding is available for projects that are is focused towards helping pupils to develop skills which would help them to gain employment or live independently after leaving school or college. The grants are made through the Wolfson Foundation’s Special Schools and Colleges grants programme. There is a 2-stage application process and the next stage 1 closing date is the 1st July 2023. Applications successful at this stage will have until the 1st September 2023 to complete the stage 2 application. Funding for Special Schools and Colleges (UK)
The Gas Safety Charity are facilitating The Think CO online workshops. These workshops are designed to raise awareness of and to communicate the dangers of carbon monoxide (CO) for people who work in the homes of vulnerable people.
Grants of up to £5,000 are available to local charities and not for profit organisations for projects that will fix, repair, maintain and improve properties and community facilities for of those in need in the UK. The funding is being made available through the Screwfix Foundations and the grants are available for all kinds of projects, from repairing buildings and improving facilities in deprived areas, to decorating the homes of people living with sickness and disabilities. Applications are reviewed on a quarterly basis. The next closing date for applications is the 10th August 2023. Screwfix Foundation (UK)
Schools, charities, and community organisations seeking to offer breaks for disadvantaged children, young people and their families can apply for support for a residential stay in England and Wales. The Youth Hostel Association’s Breaks Programme offers bursaries to primary schools, secondary schools, special schools, schools offering alternative provision and colleges to help meet the costs of a residential trip. The programme also offers fully or part-funded residential trips to groups of young people and families facing challenges that make travel and adventure difficult to access. They are arranged via application or referral from partner organisations including charities, community groups and home education networks. No application deadline is given. Residential Breaks for Disadvantaged Children, Young People & Families (England & Wales)
The Individual and Families Debt Write Off Fund, administered by the British Gas Energy Trust, is now open for applications. The fund provides eligible applicants with a grant of up to £1,500 to clear outstanding arrears with their energy supplier. Unlike some other funds, eligibility is not limited to British Gas customers. However, customers of Eon, Eon Next, EDF, Scottish Power, and Octopus should apply to their respective funds instead. To qualify for the grant, the applicant must live in England, Scotland, or Wales and not have received a grant from the British Gas Energy Trust in the past 2 years. Additionally, they must be seeking a grant to clear an outstanding debt on a current or open gas, electricity, or dual fuel energy account in their name, or be a member of the household with the debt. Furthermore, the applicant must have electric and/or gas debt, be in or facing Fuel Poverty, and have received help from a money advice agency. If the applicant does not satisfy all of these criteria, their application will not be assessed. Financial Support for Individuals and Families who are Experiencing Fuel Poverty and Struggling to Pay their Energy Bills (England, Scotland and Wales)
‘The Big Help Out is set to become an annual event, according to organisers of the volunteering day. More than 30,000 charities were scheduled to hold 55,000 events for volunteers at the inaugural event, established to mark the coronation of King Charles III…’ Read more here.
‘Neighbourhood’ The International Journal of Neighbourhood Renewal is pleased to announce that it is holding its Annual Conference for 2023 in London on the 16th and 17th November. This two day event is an ideal opportunity to hear of a range of key developments and research in the field of urban regeneration and neighbourhood and community renewal. There will be up to 20 informative speakers for the Conference and up to 20 organisations showcasing their work in this field of policy. If you would like to attend please email here Registration fees to attend are as follows:
£295 Standard rate.
£145 for Voluntary Organisations and Community Groups
£95 for Students
If you want to submit a presentation or paper to present to the Conference please send in a proposal, draft paper or title here All Papers presented at the Conference will be featured in the December 2023 Edition of the Journal of Neighbourhood Renewal. In addition all attendees at the Conference will receive a free annual subscription to the Journal of Neighbourhood Renewal.
If your Organisation would like to showcase your urban and neighbourhood regeneration work at the Conference we do have 20 spaces available as these are priced at:
£795 Standard rate.
£295 for Voluntary Organisations and Community Groups.
If you require a Display Space please just drop us an email here
Details of the Conference will appear as the weeks progress on its website.
We are completing a community action project to work with communities around our practice to address a local health priority. Our project aims to address low breast cancer screening uptake within the community. Local organisations interested in our future proposed interventions based on feedback after speaking to women as to why they might not attend, please contact:
Alain alain.geneste20@imperial.ac.uk & Sharon sharon.manoj20@imperial.ac.uk (Third-year medical students, Imperial College London, currently completing placement at The Bush Doctors)
Author of Fundraising Strategy, Richard Sved, takes us through the first steps in building an innovative strategy that will elevate your fundraising to the next level. Take a look here.
Tuesday, June 13th 2023
9:30 AM — 1:00 PM
There was an estimated 14.1% of households where no member of the household was in employment in the period April to June 2022, unchanged compared with the same period last year. In 2021, 1.1 million children (8.9%) lived in long-term workless households, up 1% on the previous year. The Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) estimated that 5.0% of adults (6.9% women and 3.0% men) aged 16 years and over experienced domestic abuse in the year ending March 2022. The number of police recorded domestic abuse-related crimes in England and Wales increased by 7.7% compared with the previous year, to 910,980 in the year ending March 2022.
The government’s Supporting Families programme – formerly the Troubled Families programme – is a targeted government intervention for families with multiple problems including crime, anti-social behaviour, truancy, unemployment, mental health problems, and domestic abuse. It aims to provide help to vulnerable families with multiple and complex problems to prevent them from escalating into crises.
The first phase of the Troubled Families programme ran from 2012 to 2015, during which period the Government claimed to have “turned around” 99% of the 117,910 families that had been identified as the target. However, subsequent independent evaluation analyses questioned the validity of these claims and the methodology underpinning them. The second and last phase of the programme covered the period 2015-2021 and introduced a range of new tools, including a new financial framework that took effect in 2018. A total of £1.1 billion was invested from 2012 to March 2021. In March 2021, the government launched its Supporting Families programme as a replacement for the Troubled Families programme, providing a whole-family focus and practical, holistic support. The new programme received £165m for 2021-22. This phase of the programme focussed on building the resilience of vulnerable families to help them thrive, and on enabling system change locally and nationally. For 2022-2023, over £200 million was made available to local authorities to improve key local services to help families combat problems such as unemployment, financial insecurity, risk of homelessness and educational inequality. The government has committed a total of £695m planned investment across the three years to March 2025.
Whilst the Troubled Families and Supporting Families programmes have achieved significant progress in transforming service provision and the lives of thousands of people, huge societal challenges remain, exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic and cost-of-living crisis. Critics argue that much more needs to be done to address the structural issues in the UK that lead to the cycle of deprivation and disadvantage. The family-intervention approach employed by the programmes has also been criticised by experts Stephen Crossley and Michael Lambert, who say the evidence suggests the approach does not work well.
This timely symposium will provide practitioners across local authorities, the police, social services, education, welfare and the housing sector with an invaluable opportunity to examine the Supporting Families Programme and discuss how to effectively galvanise a range of local services around families in order to support them.
Programme
- Assess the progress made in the Troubled Families Programme and Supporting Family Programme
- Review findings from the ‘Earned Autonomy’ model
- Assess the role of Family Hubs and the impact of the ‘hub’ model
- Evaluate the impact that the Supporting Families Programme and the Data Accelerator Fund has had on collating better data and improving how councils use data to support vulnerable families
- Examine ways to enhance multi-agency working to transform the health, social and financial circumstances of vulnerable families
- Discuss how the Supporting Families Programme can be improved to meet the challenges created by the cost-of-living crisis
- Share best practice and discuss innovative strategies to improve the lives of families with complex disadvantages
- Consider ways to support families in navigating services and find practical pathways to employment
- Explore how to deliver an effective whole family intervention approach
- Identify ways to improve educational attainment and child welfare
- Examine the underlying factors leading to high levels of deprivation and social breakdown in the UK
To register for the briefing, please click here.
