New £3m Fund for Healthy Communities in England

Funding available to empower voluntary and community sector organisations to work together with the local health and care sector to boost the health and wellbeing of their communities.

The National Lottery Community Fund (TNLCF) and The King’s Fund are jointly supporting partnership-working in local areas between the voluntary and community sector, the NHS and local authorities to improve the health and wellbeing of local communities.

The Healthy Communities Together programme will offer up to £3 million of grant funding and £850,000 of leadership development support to develop effective and sustainable partnerships to improve health and wellbeing, reduce health inequalities and empower communities.

The programme will enable partners to develop their relationships, to identify and agree what they need to work together more effectively to ensure the involvement of organisations working across communities, and to collaboratively create a plan to deliver meaningful change. This may include:

Developing infrastructure to engage the VCSE and enable effective partnership
Developing a local approach to measuring impact on health and wellbeing
Co-producing ways of commissioning and delivering services for particular groups of people, such as groups who are marginalised, have complex needs or live with long-term conditions
Developing a commissioning framework which supports the diversity of the VCSE sector locally (for example, including very small organisations) or
Developing community-centred approaches which aim to involve and empower local people in improving health and wellbeing.

The programme will fund partnerships that must include:

A voluntary, community and social enterprise sector organisation
A local authority, and
An NHS organisation (including Clinical Commissioning Groups, NHS Trusts and primary care bodies).

Both new partnerships, and one that’s already been set up are eligible to apply.

Partnerships must cover a defined ‘place’ in England.

The programme consists of two phases. In phase 1, a maximum of six areas will receive up to £50,000 funding from The National Lottery Community Fund and a package of learning and development support from the King’s Fund for up to nine months to develop their partnership and project plans.

At the end of this phase, each site will be invited to apply for phase 2 of the programme for further funding and support.

Successful partnerships will receive up to £450,000, as well as ongoing learning and development support from The King’s Fund, over a further three years.

Stage 1 applications must be submitted by the deadline of 27 March 2020.

Full details…