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Interest in the fund far exceeded the amount of national grant funding available in 201, with a total of 76 applications across all English regions.
Grant award winning projects were selected for their innovative ideas / initiatives and ways of working with volunteers in the sector. The themes under which successful applicants applied are:
Projects that improve patient/service user experience and outcomes through volunteering.
Successful projects funded under this theme are:
Organisation: Diabetes UK,
Project Name: The Diabetes UK Community Champions Volunteer Programme
Project Aims: The project has 5 main aims focussing on avoid preventable cases of diabetes by improving awareness of diabetes lifestyle risk factors and supporting the adoption of healthier lifestyles in Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) groups across England, Improve information flow to BAME communities and build strong and sustainable local networks.
Organisation: Royal Mencap Society,
Project Name: Getting it Right - From the Start
Project Aims: To ensure that people with a learning disability (pwld) are empowered to access healthcare services on a more equal basis, by supporting volunteers to: audit individual services for necessary reasonable adjustments, develop skills in staff and clinicians at all levels to offer inclusive, patient-centred and safe service, and provide ongoing feedback and advice through an advisory panel.
Organisation: Family Lives (operating as Parentline Plus)
Project Name: Focused on Families
Project Aims : Family Lives will work in partnership with health and social care professionals to identify vulnerable families at risk of poor mental and physical health outcomes and train FSMs to provide effective interventions, such as befriending, to achieve the following aims:
Projects that improve public health through action to reduce health inequalities in health and social care through active volunteering initiatives.
Organisation: YMCA England
Project Name: YMCA Young Health Champions
Project Aims: The project aims to reduce health inequalities among young people living in areas of disadvantage by using young volunteers as peer leaders. These Young Health Champions will provide support and leadership to hard-to-reach young people so they engage more effectively with local health and social care provision, and thus lead healthier lifestyles.
Organisation: The Place2Be
Project Name: The Place2Be: developing active community-based volunteering
Project Aims: The project aim is to empower local leadership to reduce health inequalities by improving access to non-stigmatising school-based mental health support and improve the mental health of children/young people through an innovative volunteer-led approach.
Organisation: Platform 51 (operating name YWCA England & Wales)
Project Name: Women Volunteers for Health
Project Aims: Pilot & refine a national, accredited model of capacity building & support for disadvantaged hard to reach women living in areas with high health inequality to become skilled & effective volunteers in the health & social care sector.
Organisation: Action for Blind People
Project Name: Volunteer counselling service for Visually Impaired people
Project Aims: To establish centres of excellence to deliver and promote emotional support counselling services to visually impaired (VI) adults, their family, friends and carers, following diagnosis of sight loss. The project will contribute to quality, choice and innovation in services to VI people and a reduction in health inequalities through improvement in user experience.
Organisation: CSV
Project Name: Stripping it Bare
Project Aims: The aim of our project is to create a network of volunteers to spread messages about difficult health issues to people like themselves in the community to create a step change in attitudes to taboo subjects. Trained volunteer Health Champions and community based volunteers will encourage people to take action on embarrassing health conditions.
Organisation: British Refugee Council
Project Name: Health Befriending Network for Refugees and Asylum Seekers
Project Aims: People arriving in the UK seeking safety are one of the most disadvantaged groups in society. Because of their circumstances they often have very specific health and mental health needs.
The aims of the project are to use a volunteer befriending network to ensure that:
Organisation: NCT
Project Name: Community Bump, Birth and Beyond Companions
Project Aims: The aim of the project is to support women from disadvantaged groups to have a positive birthing experience and feel supported through their pregnancy, breastfeeding and early postnatal period. These include women from bme groups, young mums and women who are isolated, facing difficult social conditions.
Projects that enable people to have greater choice over their care and support, leading to improvements for individuals, and complements existing statutory and community provision through volunteering.
Organisation: Age UK
Project Name: Maximising Older People's Personal Budget Use ( MOPPU)
Project Aims: The overarching aim is to improve social care outcomes for older people using personal budgets. Using a volunteer-delivery model, they will:
Organisation: The Young Foundation
Project Name: Uplift Time Credits
Project Aims: Put communities at the centre in addressing health and social care needs by developing a radical new time credits system that energises and facilitates mutual support at a very local level to reduce dependency on statutory services, impact on unplanned hospital admissions, and enable recovery on discharge from hospital.
Click here to download the National Strategic Priorities.
Information for applicants - National Grants Health and Social Care Volunteering Fund