A £5.3m programme aimed at proving the effectiveness of early intervention funding has been launched today by the Big Lottery Fund, Comic Relief and Esmée Fairbairn Foundation.
The project, called the Early Action Neighbourhood Fund will sponsor three projects in Coventry, Norwich and Hartlepool specialising in children and community services.
It will act as a pilot programme to explore whether more grant funding can be used to prevent problems occuring, rather than solve them afterwards.
Dawn Austwick, chief executive of the Big Lottery Fund, said: “This is an exciting moment, building on 12 months’ work but with aspirations to change the way early action is approached long into the future.
“It is also a great way of working together as funders, drawing in best practice, learning and experience from all the partners.”
The charities benefiting from the funds include Changing Futures North East, which aims to reduce spending on acute children’s services in Hartlepool by 10 per cent. It will receive £1.56m over five years. The Mancroft Advice Project, based in Norwich, will receive £1.64m over five years, with money going towards reducing spending in the city’s child and adolescent mental health service budget.
The third charity receiving £1.53m over five years is the Coventry Law Centre, whose Ignite project aims to reduce demand on specialised community services so that “fewer people reach crisis point”.
The fund is a result of an Early Action Task Force which met in 2011 to discuss bringing charities, businesses and government leaders together to make the case for a shift in spending towards prevention.
The Early Action Neighbourhood Fund is the result of 12 months’ work by the Early Action Funders Alliance to design a targeted pilot programme which could provide evidence for the value of early action.
Five members of the Alliance committed resources in order to test and demonstrate the potential impact of early action work and funding in England. The grant funding comes from Big Lottery Fund, Comic Relief and Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, with additional support and guidance coming from Barrow Cadbury Trust and the Legal Education Foundation.
Task Force
Judith McNeill, grants director of Comic Relief, said: “Early action makes sense. Why wait until problems are entrenched and harder to solve? By targeting funding early, we will see better outcomes for individuals, families, and communities and hopefully show that by using limited resources in a different way we can stretch them further and help more people.”
Caroline Mason, chief executive of Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, said: “We hope that this fund will demonstrate the value of early action to other funders, commissioners and to the voluntary sector.”
