Communities Mental Health and Wellbeing Fund for Adults - Year 4 - Monitoring and reporting summary

Section A: Reach of Funded Projects

It is important to note that a strength of the Fund is the diverse range of projects it has supported. A list of funded projects for Year 4 has also been published alongside this report.

What was asked

TSIs were asked to provide project level data in terms of the number of awards, size and coverage of the funded organisations, size of grants and type of initiative as well as their focus on priority groups and themes.

Number of Grants

The total number of applications received across Scotland was 2,906. The level of applications was slightly higher compared to the first three Years of the Fund.

Of those applications, 1,462 awards were made to community projects, resulting in funding for 1,446 organisations. Some organisations gained funding for more than one project. The level of grants awarded has remained fairly consistent over the last 3 years.

Type and range of projects

In reviewing the range of funded projects, it is clear that a diverse range of projects are being supported.

The most common types of projects being funded are:

• Social or group activity (511) 35%;
• Peer support and mentoring (223) 15%;
• Counselling or Therapeutic (213) 15%;
• Sport or physical activity (124) 9%;
• Befriending and Community Support (72) 5%;
• Arts and Crafts (63) 4.29%;
• Nature (49) 3%;
• Financial inclusion or cost of living (37) 3%;
• Food (34) 2%;
• Culture (30) 2%.

It should be noted that projects were to select one of the above categories best fitted to the project although many will relate to more than one of these categories.

19 projects were also using funding for equipment or running costs (1%). 31 projects reported their projects as falling under the “other” category, and 60 projects did not provide any detail for this question (4%).

Funding of new and existing projects

Of the project data returned, 41% were new projects, 56% were existing projects, and data was not available for 3% of projects.

Size of grants awarded

Overall, most grants (56%) were for £10,000 or less. 35% were for grants between £10,000 to £20,000, 10% were for between £20,000 to £50,000, with only four grants (0.3%) over £50,000.

Capital funding was awarded to 109 projects. The majority of awards (70%) were awarded between £1,000 and £5,000 with 23% receiving between £250 and £999, with the remaining projects (7%) receiving less than £250. Size of organisations funded

TSIs were asked to list the size of organisation that had been funded, the awards were allocated as follows:

• 405 awards (28%) went to small organisations (with an annual turnover under £25,000)
• 862 awards (59%) went to medium sized organisations (with an annual turnover between £25,000 and £1 million)
• 130 (9%) went to large organisations (with an annual turnover over £1 million)
• 65 projects were marked as “N/A” (4%)

The majority of grants (87%) were therefore allocated to either small or medium sized organisations.

Geographical coverage of funded organisations

Project focus on target groups

TSIs were asked to report whether projects were primarily aimed at the general population, open to all but with a focus on particular target groups or aimed directly at particular target groups. Analysis shows:

• 24% were aimed at general population
• 51% were open to all but with a focus on particular target groups
• 24.2% were aimed directly at particular target groups

TSIs were also asked to note up to three target groups that their projects were seeking to reach. The results are outlined in the table below.

The most commonly targeted groups were:

• people with a long term health condition or disability (549) 37%
• people facing socio economic disadvantage (481) 32%
• older people aged 50+ (385) 26%
• people experiencing severe and multiple disadvantage (333) 22%
• people with diagnosed mental illness (287) 19%

The groups least commonly targeted were:

• people from a minority ethnic background (157) 10%^[1]
• refugees and those with no recourse to public funds (84) 5%
• lesbian gay bisexual and transgender and intersex LGBTI communities (77) 5%

An additional 118 (8%) identified targeting projects at other groups.

Project focus on Fund’s key priorities

The Fund supports a wide range of grassroots community projects including those based around peer support, physical activity, arts and crafts activities, social interaction and befriending, with a strong emphasis on the key themes of prevention and early intervention, suicide prevention, addressing social isolation and tackling poverty.

Overall, there is very strong coverage across the fund priorities, with social isolation and loneliness, and tackling poverty and inequality the most prominent. Suicide prevention continues to be a focus for some but is less commonly cited.

• Social isolation and loneliness was a strong theme, with 1,021 projects including a focus on this
• Tackling poverty and inequality was the focus of 608 projects
• Suicide prevention is the least common theme to be adopted with 324 having this as a sole focus, although many included this as a shared theme

Contribution to the Best Start, Bright Futures: Tackling Child Poverty Delivery Plan 2022-2026

The Fund Guidance highlighted the importance of considering the six priority at risk family types (most at risk of poverty) identified in the Best Start, Bright Futures: Tackling Child Poverty Delivery Plan 2022 to 2026. TSIs were asked to consider whether projects being funded are helping to support some of the six priority at risk families.

Analysis of returns shows that 619 projects (44%) were supporting people from at least one of six priority at risk families. Of these 221 (36%) projects focused on one target group and 398 (64%) on more than one group. 122 (8.5%) projects reported supporting all six groups.

As the majority of projects declared support for multiple priorities the numbers below will not add up to the same as total of projects. Of the overall number of projects these accounted for:

• Families with a disabled family member (452) 31%
• Lone parents (408) 28%
• Families with 3 children (290) 20%
• Minority ethnic families (287) 20%
• Mothers aged less than 25 (232) 16%
• Families where the youngest children are under 1 year old (228) 16%

Administration and Capacity Grant

• A grant of £734,000 was provided to support administration costs and the capacity building efforts of Third Sector Interfaces.
• This was distributed across Third Sector Interfaces, each receiving approx. 5% of their Fund grant amount as an Administration and Capacity Building Grant. TSIs were also offered the flexibility to draw on up to 1% of their main fund allocation to resource some specific capacity building support to projects focused on improving mental health and wellbeing, such as supporting training needs.
• 18 of 32 (56%) TSIs used the option to allocate up to 1% of the main fund for capacity building for a total of £73,749.21