The Scottish Government launched The Communities Mental Health and Well-being Fund for adults in October 2021. To date, the Fund has supported nearly 2,000 community projects delivering various activities and programmes.
Here at bOunceT, we were awarded £10,000 grant funding at the start of 2022 to fund 4 months worth of project activities.
We blogged about what we were going to do, and how we were going to do it earlier this year. Click here to read more!
Background of the Fund
The Communities Mental Health and Well-being Fund is part of the wider £120 million Recovery and Renewal Fund announced in February 2021 to ensure the delivery of the commitments set out in the Mental Health Transition and Recovery Plan in response to the mental health need arising from the pandemic.
A range of charity-support bodies and social enterprises, known as TSI’s (Third Sector Interfaces), are managing the fund in partnership with local integrated health authorities and other partners including Community Planning Partnerships and local authority mental health leads.
More funding, more impact
The fund launched last year has been awarded a further £15 million. The new investment will allow the fund to continue for another year. Applications for Round 2 of this fund are open now - and we hope to make another successful application!
Speaking ahead of Mental Health Awareness Week, Mental Well-being Minister Kevin Stewart said:
This investment reflects the importance we place on promoting good mental health and early intervention for those facing mental health challenges - ensuring that people can access a range of different types of support to match their needs. It will help us continue to support a range of vulnerable community mental health and well-being projects across Scotland.
So, what did we do?
As blogged about earlier this year, the main outcomes we set ourselves for the Mental Health Fund project were:
I am very pleased to say that we did everything we said we would do, and spent the money how we said we were going to!
We are currently writing a more formal report to showcase the fantastic work we did, and highlight some of the feedback we received. This social impact report will be available to read on our website soon!
Here’s a quick snap shot from the report that highlights some of our stats from this project!
What did we learn?
Overall, we discovered that some of our ‘core supports' needs to change, and that our service provision should be adapted to ensure we continue to meet our beneficiaries needs.
In simple terms, we always believed our interventions and therapy services were for ‘the benefit of the children/ adults’ who attended 1:1 sessions. However, arguably more importantly, we need to empower the parents/carers to be the professionals and provide therapeutic services to them directly too.
Next, we were able to deliver 1:1 OT Coaching sessions with 10 parent carers.
We have created a stand alone report about the pilot of these sessions within our OPC Pilot Report - you can click here to read it!
Next, another intervention we were able to offer parents and carers was fully funded access to the popular eLearning module - Purposeful Play!
So, what are we going to do next?
Well, hopefully we will be able to use the evidence & feedback that we have gathered to ensure we can reapply for further funding [from this fund and others].
We must continue to provide as much tailored and person-centred support to our beneficiaries. This needs to be in a proactive and structured way that considers the whole family's needs.
Thank you for taking the time to read our update about what we did with this funding, and what the impact has been.
I can’t wait to share the full social impact report online soon!
#Team Bounce OT
:)
