Scotland Big briefing
Welcome to this edition of Big Briefing
We have a new chair of the Scotland committee. Maureen McGinn took up the post on 1 December when Alison Magee stood down after five years in the role. Maureen has been a member of the Scotland Committee of the Big Lottery Fund since March 2007. She is also currently an advisor on social justice to the Paul Hamlyn Foundation and a member of the steering group of the Partnership Drugs Initiative of Lloyds TSB Foundation for Scotland. Her past grant making experience also includes running the Laidlaw Youth Trust which promoted partnership working between charities supporting children and vulnerable young people in Scotland. She is involved in a voluntary capacity with several charities as a trustee. Her earlier career included periods working for a charity, a trade union and in central and local government.
In Scotland we have a busy year in 2012. We are continuing to deliver investment from the programmes you are all familiar with – 2014 Communities, Investing in Ideas, Awards for All and the Investing in Communities portfolio of Life Transitions, Supporting 21st Century Life, Growing Community Assets and Community Spaces Scotland.
We are making an additional £2million available to all existing Investing in Communities grant-holders, as long as they are meeting their agreed terms and conditions. The funding is aimed at helping organisations address difficulties caused by loss of match funding which is impacting on their ability to deliver their original project. This kind of approach shows our intent as an intelligent funder and means that we are providing an option for our grantholders to continue to deliver their projects in spite of experiencing financial difficulty.
Within Scotland’s Investing in Communities portfolio we are also developing more targeted interventions in specific areas of Life Transitions and Supporting 21st Century Life. There are some key issues that we think require some additional targeted funding.
This month we will be launching a programme to support lone parents with the challenges of family life, childcare and work. We are seeking to facilitate improved access to effective services for lone parents furthest from the labour market and who will not benefit effectively from mainstream support. It will help lone parent families with complex needs and who are least likely to benefit from mainstream service provision and will invest up to £6 million in key local authority areas: Glasgow, Edinburgh, North Lanarkshire, South Lanarkshire and Fife.
We also recently announced more than £6 million to support Families affected by domestic abuse in Scotland. The money will go to 18 projects which work with vulnerable women and families, with a Scotland wide project to support children.
I hope you find the briefing helpful.
Jackie
Scotland Director
Funding programmes open to your constituents
You can use our Funding Finder to search for funding programmes that are available for your constituents, while our grants search will allow you to find projects that have been funded in your constituency.
2014 communities supporting future stars
In January young Scots Daniel Keating and Daniel Purvis competed against the global gymnastics elite as the World Artistic Gymnastic Championships in Tokyo. Both men began their gymnastics careers at local clubs and now a trailblazing new programme in Dundee is aiming to find medal winning gymnastic stars of the future thanks to funding for coaches from the Big Lottery Fund’s 2014 Communities scheme.
Salto Gymnastics & Trampoline Club are set to go into five primary schools to run weekly lunchtime gymnastic sessions with children who’ve never had the chance to vault or bounce before. Head Coach, Pamela Bowie, explained, “This programme is the first of its kind in Scotland as we can actually go straight into the primary schools, targeting children at the right age who not only become members of the club but are also affiliated to Scottish Gymnastics.”
“This programme will enable us as a nation to provide medal winners in the future but it’s equally important that we also have quality coaches at grassroots level.”
Salto club member, Josh Robertson, aged seven said, “I love the Rings and Parallel Bars and would love to take part in Gymnastics Competitions. I attended the Scottish Championships in February and have seen Daniel Keating and Daniel Purvis and would love to be as good as them.”
Scottish Gymnastics are backing the Salto scheme, Tayside Regional Manager Steven Maloney said, “We are really excited about this programme as it’s a template for the way we want to work in the future. Gymnastics is a sport that enhances physical literacy and through the many gymnastics disciplines on offer there is something to attract both boys and girls from all age groups in to the sport.
“In my direct experience 2014 Communities is making a difference to the sport at a grassroots level. In the five clubs I have been involved helping make successful applications to the programme means that at least a 150 young people are new members and have become involved in the sport. That’s just in my area. Without this additional funding we wouldn’t be in this position.”
Make a difference in your community – apply for Awards for All
It’s that time of year when communities are thinking about what they would like to achieve or see happen over the next 12 months. If any of your constituents have a great idea and you think a boost with National Lottery funding from Awards for All would benefit your local community why not visit our website www.awardsforall.org.uk or phone 0300 123 7110 to find out how we can help.
In Scotland Awards for All is a joint awards programme set up to help small groups which involves three Lottery distributors: the Big Lottery Fund, Creative Scotland and sportscotland.
Awards for All gives grants of between £500 and £10,000 for people to take part in art, sport and community activities, and projects that promote education, the environment and health in the local community.
We can fund a wide range of activities through the Programme and want to support projects that meet our outcomes.
- People have better chances in life.
- Communities are safer, stronger and more able to work together to tackle inequalities.
- People have better and more sustainable services and environments.
- People and communities are healthier.
Dunbar Community Bakery (DBC) is Scotland’s first community owned bakery. It opened for business in October last year and now employs 10 local people. The bakery successfully applied for Awards for All grant of £10,000 to employ a manager to help to bring the whole project together. DBC Vice Chair, Allen Simpson, said, “Most of our Committee members have full time jobs and we desperately needed someone to co-ordinate all the many, many strands of our project to take it forward and make it work. I can honestly say that we wouldn’t be at the stage we are at today without this project manager so the Awards for All grant was critical to help us get the bakery off the ground. “
“The application process was really straightforward and I felt that the way the form was set out helped us to focus on what we were trying to achieve. It was a very quick and clean and I would have to say supportive and professional process. I would encourage other groups to apply as the support you get when you apply makes you feel you are not on your own and supported by the staff all the way. Awards for All can help to do things and empowers you to finally make the changes you would like to see happen in your community.”
Forces in Mind
BIG was delighted to announce the formal launch of the Big Lottery Fund’s (BIG) £35 million Forces in Mind Trust (FIMT) - a partnership of forces’ charities and mental health organisations that over the next 20 years will bring vital support to thousands of former UK military personnel and their families to help them re-integrate into civilian life.
Our ambitions for the Trust which is being delivered by a partnership led by the Confederation of Service Charities (COBSEO) are to improve fundamentally the way in which services are developed and delivered in support of veterans and their families. The Trust will deliver improved partnership working between service, ex-service and other relevant organisations to provide more integrated, flexible support. This is an approach which the veterans’ sector wholly supports.
The Trust will focus on addressing the mental health issues that former forces personnel can experience when returning to civilian life,which at their extreme can include a range of issues such as post traumatic stress disorder, social exclusion, family trauma, suicide, and substance misuse.
Improving Futures
BIG recently announced awards totalling £17.9m across the UK for 20 ground-breaking projects to help transform the life chances of young children growing up in very difficult family circumstances.
These are the first awards from BIG’s Improving Futures programme, which will provide up to £26 million for more joined-up and earlier support to families with multiple and complex problems.
BIG’s backing will see families being offered tailored support from local voluntary sector organisations working in partnerships with public services. Each partnership will receive up to £900,000 over three to five years to work with families whose eldest children are aged five to ten years old. Around 8,000 families will benefit from this round of awards.
Peter Ainsworth, Chair of the Big Lottery Fund said: “The focus of this programme is firmly on the children. They don’t choose the families or circumstances they are born into, but adult issues – such as unemployment, domestic violence, housing or health issues – can have a devastating effect on children’s lives and their life chances.
“Too many families in difficult circumstances still don’t know who to turn to for help with well-meaning agencies often acting in an uncoordinated way that doesn’t help resolve the problems families are facing. By mobilising all those who can help at a local level – not just big charities, also small ones, volunteers, peers, schools, and GPs amongst others – in a coordinated way, this programme aims to pilot and explore the new ways of improving the lives of some of the most vulnerable children in the UK.
“This programme is about innovation and finding successful, cost effective ways of helping those families, so that their problems don’t escalate into crisis. The thorough evaluation accompanying this work will help ensure that what we learn benefits children and their families well beyond the projects themselves.”
The programme will see some of the largest charities working together with some of the smallest community organisations and local public services to trial a range of family interventions.
A publication which provides further information about how the projects will change the lives of children across the UK can be found 
here New projects to transform the lives of children - 614KB
BIG in your constituency
If you would like further information, want to find out more about the impact of our funding or arrange a visit to a project that we have funded in your constituency, please contact Gillian Miller, Senior Policy and Development Advisor on 0141 242 1490 or email: gillian.miller@biglotteryfund.org.uk
On our ‘BIG in your constituency’ web page, there are information sheets on our current programmes that can be used to deal with constituency queries about funding. There are also briefings on our funding impact and learning by portfolio area. These can be found on our constituency pages.
BIG advice line 0845 4 10 20 30
