Communities Mental Health and Wellbeing Fund for Adults - year 3: monitoring and reporting summary

Executive Summary

Introduction and Background

Funding

In April 2023, it was formally announced by the Cabinet Secretary for NHS Recovery, Health and Sport that £15 million for a third year of the Communities Mental Health and Wellbeing Fund for Adults would be made available for 2023/24. This report relates to the delivery of Year 3 funding.

Aims

The overarching aim of the Fund is to:

Support community based initiatives that promote and develop good mental health and wellbeing and/or mitigate and protect against the impact of distress and mental ill health within the adult population (aged 16 or over), with a particular focus on prevention and early intervention.

Specifically, it aims to:

1. Tackle mental health inequalities through supporting a range of 'at risk' groups (outlined below).

2. Address priority issues of social isolation and loneliness, suicide prevention and poverty and inequality with a particular emphasis on responding to the cost of living crisis and providing support to those facing socio-economic disadvantage.

3. Support small 'grass roots' community groups and organisations to deliver such activities.

4. Provide opportunities for people to connect with each other, build trusted relationships and revitalise communities.

The Fund directly contributes to Outcome 4 of the Mental Health and Wellbeing Strategy published in June 2023:

"better equipped communities to support people's mental health and wellbeing and provide opportunities to connect with others"

It also clearly supports the three key areas of focus in the Strategy:

• Promote positive mental health and wellbeing for the whole population, improving understanding and tackling stigma, inequality and discrimination;
• Prevent mental health issues occurring or escalating and tackle underlying causes, adversities and inequalities wherever possible; and
• Provide mental health and wellbeing support and care, ensuring people and communities can access the right information, skills, services and opportunities in the right place at the right time, using a person-centred approach.

In addition it delivers on strategic action 3.2 of the accompanying Delivery Plan published November 2023:

"We will continue to build capacity in local services and third sector community groups, in order to ensure everyone in Scotland, particularly people most at risk, are able to access mental health and wellbeing support within their local communities".

The at risk groups the Fund specifically seeks to support are:

• Women (particularly those affected by gender based sexual violence)
• People with a long term health condition or disability
• People from a minority ethnic background
• Refugees and those with no recourse to public funds
• People facing socio-economic disadvantage
• People experiencing severe and multiple disadvantage
• People with diagnosed mental illness
• People affected by psychological trauma (including adverse childhood experiences)
• People who have experienced bereavement or loss
• People disadvantaged by geographical location (particularly remote and rural areas)
• Older people (aged 50 and above)
• Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTQI+) communities.

Local partnerships can consider which of these groups and any locally identified groups should be a priority for the Fund in their local partnership plan, in line with local needs.

Delivery

The Fund is delivered through a locally focused and co-ordinated approach via Local Partnership Groups, working together and building upon existing partnerships to ensure that support to community based organisations is directed appropriately and in a coherent way. Each regional Third Sector Interface (TSI) has overall accountability for the spend at local level and for working in collaboration with Integration Authorities and other existing local partners. Each TSI leads in the coordination of the local plan and undertakes fund administration, capacity building support and local monitoring and evaluation.

Reporting

This summary outlines a national-level analysis of local monitoring and reporting data for Year 3 funding provided by TSIs in their capacity as the lead partner for the delivery of the Fund.

It should be noted that in Year 3 we significantly reduced the reporting requirements asked of TSIs for this funding round, including the removal of the interim stage reporting which has, in turn, significantly reduced the length of this report in comparison to Years 1 and 2.

The main focus of Year 3 reporting is understanding who has been funded and for what purpose.

Key Findings – Reach of Funded Projects

One TSI did not provide any end year project level data for Year 3 due to exceptional circumstances, therefore this report only focuses on 31 completed returns.

• Number of awards: 1,515 grants have been awarded in Year 3 which has resulted in funding for 1,363 organisations. This means that 4,748 awards have been made across the first three years of the Fund.

• Balance of new and existing projects: Of the project data returned, 37.62% were new projects, 44.37% were existing projects (previous Fund grantees), 13.27% were existing projects (not previously funded by the Communities Fund), 1.71% were marked as N/A, and 2.51% of responses were left blank.
• Small grants: Overall most grants (59.1%) were for £10,000 or less. Small grants between £2,000 and £10,000 were most commonly awarded, with 44.98% of grants allocated in this bracket. 29.5% were for grants between £10,000 and £20,000, 10.14% were for between £20,000 and £50,000, with only 4 grants (0.36%) for over £50,000. These proportions are broadly similar to year two, with an increase of ~2% in grants under £2,000 and a ~4% increase for all grants under £10,000. There is a 1.5% percentage point decrease for grants between £10,000 to £20,000 and a ~2% decrease in grants between £20,000 - £50,000. There was a small increase (~0.26%) in grants awarded over £50,000.
• Smaller organisations: Most funding (85%) went to either small or medium sized organisations with incomes less than £1 million. This is very much in line with the overall ethos of the Fund.
• Types of projects: A wide range of types of community mental health and wellbeing projects have been funded with an increase in those focused around group activities and social activities. These and many other projects highlight the strong themes of community connection, social interaction and preventative approaches. Other projects focus on sport and exercise, nature, social spaces, art and befriending groups as well as therapeutic approaches and many more.

Target groups and priority issues

• Targeting: 24% of projects were aimed at general population, with 25% open to all but with a focus on particular target groups and 49% aimed directly at particular target groups. (2% of answers were left blank).
• Spread: Awards were made to projects focused on a range of the Fund's target groups as well as many others identified locally, such as carers.
• The most commonly targeted groups were: Families with a disabled member (603), lone parents (566), older people (450) and people experiencing severe and multiple disadvantage (422).
• The least commonly targeted groups were: People who have experienced bereavement or loss (203), refugees and those with no recourse to public funds (108), and Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender and Intersex (LGBTQI+) communities (95).

Priority themes

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 1,311 projects including a focus on this;
• Tackling poverty and inequality (an increased focus in Year 3 in response to the cost of living crisis) was the focus of 743 projects, and a shared theme of many others;
• Suicide prevention is the least common theme to be adopted with 376 having this as a sole focus although many included this as a shared theme.

Key Findings: Process – Fund delivery approach

The Fund and its delivery model are now well established and the external evaluation of Year 1 of the Fund, which was published in July 2023, highlighted the success of the delivery approach adopted by TSIs.

In recognition of this and to address the reduction in the Administration and Capacity Building Grant awarded for Year 3, we significantly reduced the reporting requirements asked of TSIs for this funding round, including the removal of the interim stage reporting.

In addition, it was agreed by the Fund's National Oversight Group on 8 December 2022 that local summary feedback surveys issued to TSIs would not request the same level of detail as in previous years due to the importance of maintaining the right balance between light touch reporting and meaningful evidence on impact.

Local Partnership Plans Summary Feedback

The Local Partnership Plan summary asked for details on Year 3 partnership arrangements, in particular:

• partners involved within the local partnership group;
• national priorities and target group priorities within local partnership plans;
• learning and planned improvements from Year 1 and Year 2; and
• risks and mitigating actions.

Application Period: 12% of TSIs advised that there would be changes to their overall application process in Year 3. This included: introducing a deadline for applications rather than a rolling programme; putting in place an earlier closing date for applications to distribute grants more quickly; stipulating one overall deadline for small and large grants rather than two; and extending the application process to allow organisations to develop plans.

Application Process: A large proportion of TSIs provided insight into the process which they would follow for Year 3. This included: a variety of approaches from TSIs to target organisations and specific groups; increasing advertisement of the Fund; a limit on applications to prevent organisations applying for both small and large grants; utilising participatory budgeting; the development of an online application portal; and preparing a support package for groups not funded.

Administration Funding: In Year 3 TSIs had the flexibility to use up to 1% of their local allocation of the main funding to support further capacity building activities among community organisations applying to the Fund. 16 TSIs (51.6%) reported in end of year monitoring that they had used the option to allocate up to 1% of the main fund for capacity building which came to a total of £69,198.74. TSIs reported that they had used this in a number of ways, for example to support internal assessors, give staff an opportunity to gain experience/understanding in funding assessment or provide one-to-one guidance and support to organisations.

Grant distribution: 18% of TSIs reported a change to their local distribution of the Fund. The changes included: a percentage of the fund being set aside for previously funded projects; and amendments/creating levels within funding pots.

Panel changes: 18% of TSIs noted within their responses that they would be further including/increasing lived experience representatives on their awards panel. As overall numbers involving people with lived experience have remained the same, this would suggest improvements within areas already engaging people with lived experience. 9% of TSIs reported other changes they would make to their panels, for example: widening the participation in the strategic management group; amending and expanding roles of members; and ensuring a minimum of 3 Trustees, Directors and Committee members governing the organisations applying.

Changes from Year 2: Whilst 50% of TSIs have made changes to their overall process for Year 3, 31% of TSIs advised their processes would broadly be the same as Year 2, with a few minor changes, and 9% of TSIs reported there would be no change to their process. It was unclear from the remaining TSIs whether there would be changes to their processes.

Key Findings: Learning and Reflections

TSI Feedback

TSIs have reflected on the Year 3 Fund administration process and fed this learning into Year 4 processes. TSIs have provided a range of constructive comments around the need for further clarity and earlier guidance, as well as improvements on reporting and the use of the National Network meetings. This feedback has been used to directly inform Year 4 guidance and monitoring requirements.

The continuing appetite for the Fund is evidenced by TSIs reporting oversubscription for a third year running.

Next Steps

For Year 4, it will be important to build on the successes of the previous 3 years such as the development of sustainable partnerships and the good practice shown in terms of TSI capacity building support provided to less experienced applicants.

Introduction

1. Purpose

This report summarises the monitoring and reporting data for Year 3 of the Communities Mental Health and Wellbeing Fund for Adults (the Fund).

This summary outlines a national-level analysis of local monitoring and reporting data for Year 3 provided by the Third Sector Interfaces (TSIs) in their capacity as the lead partner for the delivery of the Fund. The analysis has been undertaken by the Mental Health Analytical Team and Communities Team within the Wellbeing and Prevention Unit of Scottish Government.

2. Fund delivery.

• The Fund is being delivered through a locally focused and co-ordinated approach via Local Partnership Groups working together and building upon existing partnerships to ensure that support for community based organisations is directed appropriately and in a coherent way.
• Each TSI: has overall accountability for the spend at local level and for working in collaboration with Integration Authorities and other existing local partnerships; leads in the coordination of the local plan; and undertakes fund administration, capacity building support and local monitoring and evaluation.
• Local application processes were developed by local partnership groups. They were accessible through local TSIs and were shared nationally at Communities Mental Health & Wellbeing Fund – TSI Scotland Network and through a wide range of networks. All local application processes for Year 3 of the Fund had commenced no later than 29 September 2023.
• National Fund guidance was shared with TSIs which, in keeping with local needs and strategies and the national aims of the Fund, provided local flexibility about the approach to distributing the Fund to grassroots community groups and organisations locally.
• Funding was distributed through grants to the 31 TSIs across Scotland (with the Dumfries and Galloway TSI managing Borders funding on their behalf).
• £15 million was distributed across all regions and in line with the current NHS Scotland Resource Allocation Committee Formula (NRAC). Further detail can be found at Annex C.
• An administration grant was provided to each TSI to support administration of the Fund, including a capacity building role to support and ensure accessibility of the Fund to less experienced groups. In Year 3 this was reduced from 7.5% to 5% of the value of the main fund allocation for the TSI, with a minimum baseline payment of £7,000 for the Island TSIs (in Year 2 this was £10,000). TSIs had the flexibility to use up to 1% of their local allocation of the main funding (their share of the £15 million) to support further capacity building activities among community organisations applying to the Fund. A total of 51.6% of TSIs used the 1%.
• Support has been provided to local partnerships through the establishment of a National Communities Mental Health and Wellbeing Network. The Network meets regularly and aims to connect local partnerships (TSIs, Health and Social Care Partnership leads, Suicide Prevention leads and any other interested parties) to help share good practice and learning from the Fund. Following a survey of TSIs in April 2024 seeking views on how the Network meetings could be improved, we have made changes to the attendees, timings and purpose of these meetings.

3. Method

The Fund and its delivery model are now well established and the external evaluation of the Fund has highlighted the success of the delivery approach adopted by TSIs. As such, TSI reporting on process aspects were significantly reduced for Year 3. We have also removed the interim stage reporting. The main focus of Year 3 reporting is understanding who has been funded and for what purpose. TSIs were asked to complete:

• a Local Partnership Plan summary feedback questionnaire in December 2023 (drawing on the Plan produced by TSIs in coordination with local partners)
• end year project level data in April 2024

Analysis of the data was undertaken by the Communities Team within the Wellbeing and Prevention Unit, Mental Health Directorate, and the Health and Social Care Analytical Unit. This involved statistical analysis of the project level data.

4. Limitations

This summary is focused on reporting returns from TSIs on: the process (in terms of the approach to delivery), the reach of projects (in terms of the number and nature of projects and their reach to target groups), and on the learning gained from Year 3 of the Fund. As previously mentioned, the report is shorter than in previous years due to the reduced reporting and monitoring requirements for Year 3.

It should be noted that the analysis is based on the 1,515 grants awarded within the returns received by the point of analysis in April 2024. It should also be noted that not all questions have been answered for all projects (a fairly low missing response rate overall) therefore this will explain any discrepancies in numbers.

More information on outcomes will need to be collected at a later date to allow projects to be embedded, rather than collecting this in end year reporting. Given this, questions posed to TSIs were largely limited to those areas where progress could be measured and reported. More detailed impact data on Year 3 will be collected in April 2025.

5. Structure of the report

This report outlines key findings as follows:

• Section A: Reach Of Funded Projects
• Section B: Process - Approach To Delivery
• Section C: Learning and Reflections