Communities Mental Health and Wellbeing Fund: year 1 - monitoring and reporting summary

Annex C Information on Funding Distribution

In October 2021, as part of the £120 million Recovery and Renewal Fund, the Minister for Mental Wellbeing announced £15 million funding for 2021/22 for a new Communities Mental Health and Wellbeing Fund.

In February 2022, an additional £6 million was provided for 2021/2022 to the Communities Mental Health and Wellbeing Fund to meet the demand for local mental health and wellbeing projects, bringing total funding made available in 2021-22 to £21 million.

This annex provides information on the breakdown of this funding, in terms of allocation to Third Sector Interfaces.

A) Fund distribution to regional TSIs - £15 Million for 2021/22 issued to Third Sector Interfaces in October 2021

The following table provides information on the value of each grant awarded to Third Sector Interfaces for distribution to community organisations.

The NHS Scotland Resource Allocation Committee Formula (NRAC) was adopted as the distribution model for the £15 million of funding. NRAC is the annually reviewed and adjusted formula, used by NHS Scotland to distribute resources to Health Boards, Health and Social Care Partnerships and Integrated Authorities (including Integrated Joint Boards) across Scotland. NRAC takes into account a range of factors, such as population size, concentration, health, age and deprivation as well as adjustments for rural geography and more isolated communities.

B) Fund distribution to regional TSIs - additional £6 million for 2021/22 issued to Third Sector Interfaces in February 2022

An additional £6 million was provided in February 2022 for 2021/2022 to meet the demand for local mental health and wellbeing projects, bringing total funding to £21 million in 2021/2022.

The additional £6 million was provided in response to the positive demand for the original £15 million announced in October. The Scottish Government had notification of a high number of high quality bids. These are competent proposals, assessed as deliverable, that were made in applications for support from the Fund, but were unable to gain support due to the Fund being oversubscribed for projects.

The funding was distribution through a demand led approach. Instead of referring to the NRAC formula, used for the Fund, to distribute the Additional Grant the Scottish Government consulted with all the TSIs and asked what the value was of high quality bids by applicants to the Fund who were not successful due to oversubscription. The allocation of the £6 million Additional Grant was based on the figures given by the TSIs.

The total value of high quality bids reported to us from the TSIs was £6,000,600, which meant that we could distribute the Additional Grant to a level that almost matched that reported figure. This resulted in the Additional Grant being able to meet the value of high quality bids that was provided by the TSIs, with only a £600 shortfall, distributed across the 27 funding requests.

Table illustrating the distribution of the Additional Grant – including reported level of high quality bids.

The additional £6 million was being distributed across Scotland, with 27 out of the 32 regions of Scotland receiving a share of the additional funding, with 5 regions not requiring the additional funding.

C) The administration/capacity building grant to TSIs

A grant of £1,136,344.57 was provided to support administration costs and the capacity building efforts of TSIs. This was distributed across TSIs, each receiving 7.5% of their Fund grant amount as an Administration Grant. For TSIs in smaller regions – Orkney, Shetland and the Western Isles – where the level of Administrative Grant would fall below a level of £10,000 it was agreed that this should be brought up to £10,000 to ensure they were not disadvantaged.