Wellbeing Fund - open application process: evaluation

5. Outcomes: What was the funding used for?

5.1 Who was supported by the Wellbeing Fund?

5.1.1 How many people were supported?

Each organisation completing the end of project monitoring form was asked to estimate the number of people it had supported through its project funded by the Wellbeing Fund. The numbers provided ranged from five to 906,800.

In general, where smaller numbers were provided, these tended to be local projects, often focusing on the mental wellbeing of a small number of people.

Where particularly large numbers (over 10,000) were given, these tended to be from organisations operating across multiple local authority areas or nationwide, particularly those providing information and advice on a large scale. This included, for example, a radio station providing information about Covid-19 to listeners, and large-scale organisations representing people with specific long term health conditions or disabilities who offered advice and support to the whole population of people living with particular conditions.

In some cases the numbers of people helped appear to be overestimates. For example, in one case an organisation which supports people with a particular health condition appears to have provided the total number of UK sufferers of the disease the organisation focuses on.

It was beyond the scope of this evaluation to verify the numbers provided by each organisation. As such, rather than presenting a total number of people supported, the data on the number of people helped are presented in ranges to provide an indication of the reach of the funded projects.

Figure 10 shows how many people funded organisations estimated that they had supported with their projects, giving figures for all projects, as well as the two most common types of project – mental health and food. The majority of organisations (64.6%) said that they supported under 500 people, including 235 projects (25.7%) which said that they supported 100 people or fewer. Much smaller numbers said that they supported over 500 people: 112 (12.2%) supported 501-1000 people, and 132 (14.4%) supported between 1,001-3000. 8.6% of organisations said that they supported 3,001 people or more.

These figures reflect the broad range and scope of the Wellbeing Fund, with projects ranging from a large number of small, local projects providing in-depth, personal support to limited numbers of service users, to food-distribution programmes of varying sizes, to a smaller number of large national information and advice services for people with a range of specific needs.

Looking specifically at mental health, which was the most common thematic focus area for funded projects, the pattern of estimated number of people helped looks broadly similar to the overall pattern. For mental health projects, 68.1% of projects said that they supported up to 500 people, while 24.% said that they supported between 501-3000 people. Only 7.6% said that they supported more than 3000 people.

For food, the second-most common focus of Wellbeing Fund projects, the pattern was slightly different, with a larger proportion of projects than average reporting supporting between 501-10,000 people, and a much small proportion than average supporting 100 people or fewer. Only 17.7% of food projects reported supporting 100 people or fewer, compared to the average of 27.6% of all projects. Meanwhile, 32.9% of food projects reported helping between 501-3,000 people, compared to 26.6% of all projects. This most likely reflects the fact that food projects tended to be designed to reach larger numbers of people, while other activities such as mental health support tended to operate on a smaller scale given their more time and resource intensive nature.

5.1.2 Who was supported?

Each organisation completing the monitoring form provided information on the types of groups and individuals it had supported with assistance from the Wellbeing Fund.

Covid-19 risk

As part of the application criteria for the Wellbeing Fund, applicants needed to demonstrate that their proposed project would meet new and acute needs which had developed as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. Of the 916 organisations to complete the monitoring form, 92.1% (844) stated that their work supported people whose health and/or personal finances were at risk from, or affected by, Covid-19.

As Figure 11 shows below, the majority of the projects supported people who were not shielding but who were at higher than average risk from the disease (73.8%), those who were financially at risk (71.9%), and those who were shielding (71.1%). Just under one in three projects (30.8%) supported people who either had Covid-19 symptoms or were living with someone with Covid-19 symptoms.

While 7.9% of projects did not specifically support any of these groups, this does not necessarily mean that these projects were not also supporting new and acute needs specific to the Covid-19 pandemic. A wide range of needs not captured in this question have developed as a result of the pandemic, such as the needs of those whose education, employment status, personal safety at home, mental health or physical health had suffered as a result of the pandemic and the lockdown. Organisations were therefore also asked about another other types of vulnerabilities faced by the people they supported. This data is shown below.

Vulnerabilities

Organisations were asked if they supported any of the vulnerable groups listed in Figure 12. As these responses demonstrate, the funded organisations worked with a range of people facing particular vulnerabilities relating to their health, financial or employment status, social marginalisation and personal safety.

Reflecting the fact that a large proportion of the fund was given to organisations with a focus on mental health, 67.8% of projects stated that they worked with people with pre-existing mental health problems.

More than two in five funded organisations (43.2%) worked with people with learning disabilities, while one almost one third (31.9%) worked with people with substance dependencies. Other common recipients of support from Wellbeing Fund projects were people who were homeless (23.6% of projects), vulnerable migrants (23.5% of projects), people with dementia (23.5% of projects) and victims of domestic abuse (22.1% of projects). Although information to show how many people from each vulnerable group were supported is not available, these data suggest that the Wellbeing Fund reached a wide range of groups who were at greatest risk from both the health and social effects of the pandemic.

Equalities data

Wellbeing Fund recipients were also asked whether they supported people from the particular groups listed in Figure 13. 84.1% (770) of end of project monitoring respondents stated that they had supported people in relation to one or more of the following groups or protected characteristics: older people; younger people; disability; gender; race; religion/belief/faith; sexual orientation and/or gender identity; and socio-economic disadvantage.

Almost half of organisations worked with people who were socio-economically disadvantaged (48.6%). A significant minority of projects also focused on younger people (44.0%), people with disabilities (40.9%), and older people (39.5%).

Smaller numbers of projects focused on supporting from specific backgrounds or communities relating to race (12.7%), gender (11.1%), religion, faith and/or belief (7.6%) and sexual orientation/gender identity (5.9%).

5.2 What did the Wellbeing Fund projects do?

Organisations responding to the monitoring questions were asked whether they provided any services or activities relating to the following categories: food; employment; money; mental health and wellbeing; physical health; home life or housing situation. The responses to this are summarised in Figure 14. Organisations were able to select as many categories as necessary to describe their projects, with many of them focusing on multiple issues.^[8]

As Figure 14 shows, over three quarters of projects (76.0%) had a focus on mental health and wellbeing, while just under half (43.8%) focused on food. Physical health (27.0%), home life or housing situation (25.2%), and money (21.0%) were also a common focus for projects. Employment was a focus for 13.0% of projects. Over a quarter of projects (26.5%) also focused on something outside of these main categories. These are discussed in detail towards the end of this section.

The majority of the 916 organisations which responded to the monitoring survey (538) selected multiple project types, while 378 (41.3%) selected a single focus.

As well as being the most common types of project, those with a focus on mental health or food were also more likely to be exclusively focused on one area. 32.5% of projects focused on mental health were exclusively focused on this, while 20.2% of food projects focused exclusively on food. In contrast, fewer than 10% of projects focusing on physical health, home life or housing situation, money, employment or "other" had an exclusive focus on one area of work. 13 projects recorded a focus on all seven categories.

In the sub-sections below, the type of activities undertaken in each area of activity are discussed. For each of the six main areas of focus (mental health; food; physical health; homelife/housing; money; and employment) a random sample of approximately 50 projects was generated. This was analysed to gain a deeper insight into what the funding was used for, and what types of projects were developed with support from the Wellbeing Fund.

5.2.1 Mental health and wellbeing

Mental health and wellbeing was the most frequent focus area for projects funded by the Wellbeing Fund. More than three quarters of all funded organisations (76%) said that their project had a focus on mental health and wellbeing (696). Of these, 226 projects were focused solely on mental health (24.7% of all projects).

Mental health and wellbeing projects took a variety of forms. Many organisations used the Wellbeing Fund grant to move their pre-existing mental health and wellbeing services online, and to adapt their offering to meet their service users' changing needs as the pandemic continued. One organisation, which works with young members of the LGBT+ community, described moving to offering remote support for its users:

"[We] applied for the Wellbeing Fund in order to be able to provide an extended service to LGBT+ young people across East Lothian and Midlothian throughout the COVID-19 Lockdown measures put in place by the Scottish and UK Government in March 2020. Prior to March 2020, [we] provided support to LGBT+ young people in Midlothian by providing a weekly social/support group for LGBT+ young people aged 12-21 and one-to-one support around LGBT+ related issues, emotional support and practical support in improving mental wellbeing. [We] aimed to extend the availability of the LGBT+ service to young people in East Lothian as well as Midlothian [and] aimed to maintain the full service during Lockdown by moving both the weekly group and one-one-one support to online and telephone methods of providing support."

Many of the projects focused on mitigating feelings of loneliness and social isolation among service users in recognition of the fact that many people were likely to struggle with the loss of social interaction caused by the lockdown. As one organisation summarised:

"The wider goal of our project was to keep people in social circles that they would otherwise not have access to due to the lock down, deliver a varied program of events in place of our originally planned summer schedule, and to connect members across the country enabling relationships that previously were unable to be created due to a distance barrier."

Often, efforts to alleviate loneliness and isolation were initiated by organisations whose main focus was not on mental health, or who did not usually typically focus on mental health. For example, organisations whose primary focus was food distribution recognised that loneliness was a major challenge for their service users, and set up additional services to provide social interaction and support for those who needed it. As one organisation explained:

"The aim of this project was to provide a local food distribution hub/delivery service. Our target group are experiencing poverty through unemployment, furlough, financial hardship, additional demands to feed families and individuals mental health issues during these times. We are working with all different circumstances from single persons to families as well as supporting people who are shielding, elderly or disabled by co-ordinating a home delivery service. Staff continue to support service users by way of telephone and physically (walks, following social distancing to people who were identified as being alone and isolated and struggling with their mental health)."

As well as focusing on maintaining service users' social connections, mental health and wellbeing projects also sought to keep service users occupied and to alleviate boredom, by providing a range of activities to take part in, particularly for younger people. One organisation distributed:

"…activity packs, sensory boxes and tablet computers to families across the area in which we operate to provide access to activities for young people who have been unable to participate in their usual face2face youth work activity owing to the COVID-19 pandemic to help reduce to effects of the pandemic on their physical and mental health."

Another organisation, working with young families, provided activities and social stimulation for children, and counselling and emotional support for their parents, to try to help alleviate the stress, anxiety and boredom of the lockdown:

"[We] aimed to provide online support through counselling and provision of trusted support workers to provide daily online/telephone calls to families to support their wellbeing and reduce anxiety and stress. We also aimed to provide a range of online children's activities focused on interactive sessions with small groups of local children who already know each other, but who are currently unable to have their normal social contacts. The aim of these sessions would be to improve mental wellbeing, alleviate boredom for the children, provide structure and routine for children and short periods of respite for parents, and to provide parents with advice and support to cope with any increased anxiety and challenging behaviour."

While many organisations' support for mental health and wellbeing focused on providing social stimulation or activities to keep people occupied during the lockdown, those with a more specialist focus on mental health were able to offer professional support via counselling, therapy or other therapeutic interventions, as shown in the example above. These projects were usually aimed at specific, pre-existing service users with particular needs. For example, one project provided therapeutic art therapy for children and young people with chronic health conditions, many of whom were at increased risk from Covid-19 and struggling with the implications of the pandemic:

"The overall aim of our project was to provide crucial early intervention support to children and young people living with chronic physical conditions and their families during the Coronavirus pandemic. We have seen an increase in demand for our art therapy services… Our young patients have weakened immune systems as a result of their physical health and the medications they are taking which means they are in the high-risk category for COVID-19. Some parents have described the added pressure on them of "keeping their child alive" through this crisis. This situation is causing heightened anxiety for children and parents alike and placing these children at greater risk than usual, as we know many already have suicidal thoughts. We wanted to use the funding to provide professional art therapy and creative interventions online to support the mental health and wellbeing of the children and young people we work with. The therapeutic process of art enables our young patients to explore and express their fears, to manage their anxiety and to build their resilience so that they are better able to cope."

Another organisation sought to support carers with online therapy sessions to help them manage the emotional strain of caring for others during the pandemic:

"Our aim was to support carer well-being. This funding was to support that through the provision of online therapy sessions to give carers time away from their caring roles and the means to manage their mental, emotional and physical health. In addition we sought funding to access an Employee Assistance Programme which would support our staff with their own well-being and enable them to have the resilience to deliver the highest standard of emotional support to carers during these highly challenging times."

5.2.2 Food

Food-related projects were the second-most common activities and services provided, with 401 of the 916 projects for which we have monitoring data (43.8%) engaged in helping people to access food in some form. As discussed above, most of these projects were not exclusively focused on food, with 79.8% of food-related projects also having a wider focus. The most common activities were the provision of free meals, food items or supermarket vouchers to individuals and families struggling to afford food themselves.

Some organisations focused on helping the specific target group they ordinarily supported to access food, with examples including organisations working with at-risk groups such as asylum seekers, women fleeing domestic abuse, families with vulnerable children, people who were homeless, and people with specific health conditions. In some cases, these organisations recognised a need to ensure that the food they provided was appropriate for their specific service-users' health needs or culturally and religiously appropriate.

Many other organisations took a broader focus, choosing to make food support available to anyone in the local area in need, recognising the likelihood that families and individuals who had not previously needed support may need it as a result of the specific circumstances of the pandemic, such as the risk of unemployment or the need to shield or self-isolate.

Some organisations, such as established food banks, sought support from the Wellbeing Fund to continue or expand work that they already undertook in relation to food provision. For many organisations, food provision was an entirely new area of work, which they had identified as important in the context of the pandemic. For example one organisation in Glasgow began providing food to support families who might miss out on services they were ordinarily reliant upon such as free school meals:

The provision of food was a new development for [our organisation] but a key focus of the support we started to provide at the beginning of the pandemic and we recognised that many of the families we worked with were often reliant on food bank provision and in receipt of free school meals and that without these supports in place, and with children at home all day families would need additional support during this time, so our response aimed to plug a specific gap that we knew existed locally within the Govan area and would be made worse by Covid-19. We hoped that we would be able to support families with food and other essential items during this time when household incomes were affected by unexpected unemployment or reduced income on furlough and parents were unable to leave the house to shop due to shielding.

While most food-related projects focused on the direct provision of food, others supported people's food-related needs in different ways. For example, by:

• assisting with food shopping for those who could afford food but could not go to shops themselves (for example if they were shielding);
• connecting or referring people in need to food provision initiatives
• and supporting people to grow their own fruits, vegetables and herbs in their allotments, community gardens or at home.

5.2.3 Physical health

247 (27.0%) of the projects focused on physical health, although only 12 of these (4.9% of all physical health projects) focused exclusively on physical health. The reason for this appears to be that the majority of projects with a physical health focus either focused on supporting people with a specific long-term health condition with a with wide-ranging support throughout the pandemic, or focused on providing a wide-range of support, including physical health support, to particular vulnerable groups. Of the random sample of 50 projects that said they had a physical health focus, 19 did not specify the physical health element in their description of their project. This suggests that in many cases, physical health was just one aspect of a much more wide-ranging project.

A significant proportion of these were projects run by organisations which focus on supporting a particular group of people with specific pre-existing health conditions or disabilities, which often meant that sufferers were at increased risk from Covid-19. These included organisations supporting people with lung disorders, chronic pain, dementia, cancers, cystic fibrosis, deafness and children with life-limiting conditions.

The support provided by these organisations through their Covid-19 projects tended to focus on supporting people, as well as their families and carers, to manage their conditions remotely and on providing information, guidance, advice and resources to help people maintain their health and stay active during the pandemic. Many of these organisations also offered wider support including mental health support, befriending and wellbeing calls, virtual peer support groups, and practical support such as food, PPE and prescription deliveries. For example, one organisation working with children living with serious health needs across Scotland set up a project to offer wide-ranging support to families, providing practical assistance and emotional support:
"Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, the families we support are facing some of the toughest challenges and the most anxious of times. [We] rapidly adapted our services to meet this sudden and growing need. In a matter of days we created our COVID-19 Direct Response Service which has already helped more than 1,000 families UK wide get the support, food, medical and PPE supplies they desperately need. Over 150,000 items have been distributed and we anticipate this dedicated service and support being needed for a significant time to come, with fears for a renewed lockdown and second wave of the virus in the winter months of 2020/21 being prepared for. Our families were amongst the first to isolate and will be some of the last to emerge… Our online information, guidance and resources have already been accessed 39,000 times and are helping families manage their way through the crisis, and we have also responded to the need for emotional support with the "Wellbeing Wednesday" initiative, posting new videos from experts with coping strategies, techniques and self-help advice. Our latest videos are focussing on the return to school."
Other physical health projects focused on supporting specific at-risk groups including homeless people, vulnerable children, young people or families, people who were shielding, elderly people and refugees and asylum seekers. In the vast majority of cases, the support for physical health was part of a much wider programme of general support for people who were likely to find living in the context of Covid-19 and the lockdown particularly difficult. One example of this was an organisation which provided a range of activities for the young people it works with. As well as providing a variety of craft, cooking and social activities to help maintain their children and young people's mental health, this organisation also provided fitness challenges:

"The fitness challenges included local treasure trails, football, hula hooping challenges, frisbee and ball games. These activities ranged from individual to group games to encourage increased fitness and interaction between family members."

Another organisation, which focused on hard-to-reach children from deprived areas, also sought to offer physical activities as part of their support programme, along with educational materials:

"Our overall aim of the project was to try and engage with children and families who may have been struggling to interact through the online channels of social media during Covid-19. We were aiming to provide some of the hardest to reach families, and those living in areas of high deprivation, with at home activity books to support the school work they were missing and also provide them with physical activities to keep them active. Also those who may have been missing their usual football activity… On top of this we were looking to provide footballs to some families struggling to afford these in the current times. This would help give children the opportunity to stay active."

Some projects were set up to continue to provide exercise or fitness classes that had previously been running face-to-face. One example of this was an organisation which runs boxing classes which used the grant to move its boxing classes online via pre-recorded sessions and Zoom in order to enable its members to stay fit and active during the lockdown.

Finally, a small number of organisations' focus on physical health revolved around sourcing, making or providing PPE to those who needed it. For example, one organisation in the Western Isles helped a local hospital and care home to source PPE:

"Staff at the hospital found that they were dangerously under-equipped with PPE and medical equipment to deal with testing and sufferers from the epidemic should the virus take hold in the island. This lack of equipment was causing genuine distress to staff. [We decided] to source the necessary supplies to NHS standard and in quantities which would ensure that the hospital could be operated safely with regard to staff, patients and the wider community… [We] were lucky to have… an ex-RAF medic who had field experience of dealing with installations of emergency medical treatment centres in various parts of the world who was able to work with the hospital to source the required supplies from alternative outlets such as eBay, Amazon and local builders' merchants.
Soon after, the tragic outbreak of Covid-19 at a private nursing home in the village occurred resulting in 10 deaths of residents, and many members of staff suffering from the virus or testing positive. We assisted with the emergency supply of PPE to help locum staff to nurse sick and anxious residents in the home."

5.2.4 Home life or housing situation

Of the 916 respondents, 231 (25.2%) said that they had a focus on people's home life or housing situations. However, only 15 projects (1.6%) focused exclusively on home life or housing.

The majority of projects which identified home life/housing as a focus were relatively broad projects focused on supporting a specific group or community of people. This included vulnerable children and families, families caring for a sick child, children of armed forces families, particular ethnic minority groups, asylum seekers, young people, elderly people, and people living with specific health conditions. In most cases, projects were designed to provide a wide range of support, including support for people spending long periods at home such as activity packs and games for children, educational and home-schooling resources and support, support with becoming digitally connected, befriending and wellbeing calls, dog-walking services, and deliveries of food, medicines and other essential items.

One organisation, for example, offered a wide range of support both to individuals in need – such as dog walking and technical assistance – as well as supporting other local services such as foodbanks:

"As with many charities throughout the UK, COVID 19 stopped all our 'traditional' projects, and we refocused our energy and attention to assisting our local community.. We worked with many other local partner organisations to target and help those in urgent need of help and were part of a co-ordinated targeted response. We amassed a network of over 40 volunteers, and offered the following services: 1. Delivering Food Parcels and Prescriptions to those self-isolated; 2. Collecting food donations for foodbanks and assisting some of these organisations with food drop offs; 3. Offering a befriending service for the vulnerable and those living in isolation; 4. Dog Walking Service for those in isolation; 5. Offering technical assistance with Skype and Zoom to keep people in touch with their families; 6. Home Schooling Support."

Other organisations focused on specific groups of people. For example, an organisation which supports "hard to reach" Sikh and ethnic minority women and children offered a range of support:

"We aimed to support people with a wide range of complex needs including: 1. Food and utility bills: Supporting people to access either deliveries of hot food, food parcels or small grants to support with food/bills. Our outreach support is working with multiple agencies to ensure people are having their basic needs met. 2. Advocacy: Working with people experiencing a wide range of personal circumstances which for a variety of reasons including language or cultural barriers that require support including; benefits, household bills, immigration, medical advice, social work and many others. 3. Emotional Support: We have saw an increase in domestic abuse, loneliness, emotional distress and mental health concerns. People are also contacting us for support with home schooling, family issues, bereavement, struggling to understand the current situation and guidelines, as well as not knowing where to go for help."

Many organisations also described offering support specifically for vulnerable and/or low-income families and children, often providing educational and home-schooling support, activities and games, and parenting support. For example, one organisation provided a range of support to vulnerable families from deprived areas known to local authorities and frontline services, who would potentially struggle as a result of the pandemic and lockdown. Their project aimed to provide creative and educational activities for children:

"The families we were supporting were able to access practical support (food parcels, health support, financial advice etc.) but there was a gap in provision [for] supported activities that teach through fun creative learning and can help families learn together and relieve stress. Whilst families and children are not able to access activities like this [at school or clubs] we wanted to support them to get creative in their own homes during this stressful period. The project provided a vital service in ensuring children and families are able to respond positively and creatively to the current crisis."

Specific homelessness, housing and domestic abuse support

A smaller proportion of projects in this category focused specifically on issues relating directly to homelessness, housing and domestic abuse. Projects focusing on homelessness and housing included provision of legal advice, casework, advocacy, and telephone support services for those who were homeless or at risk of homelessness.

One example of this is a project designed to house people at risk of homelessness:

"We aimed to house people from South Lanarkshire who were homeless and/or threatened by homelessness safely during the Coronavirus pandemic, in a way that would protect them, allow them to remain in South Lanarkshire, and support them to develop life skills and prepare for a move into independent living. We did this through a working partnership with South Lanarkshire Council, who had identified safe and suitable modern housing. The funding would allow us to hire and train staff who would support residents in their accommodation during the worst of the pandemic, and help them to improve their health, become engaged with their community, access education, training, and employment, and prepare to live independently in their own tenancies."

Another example of this is a project designed to provide legal advice and casework for people vulnerable to problems including homelessness and debt:

"The aim of the project was to address the gap in services to the most vulnerable people being affected by the covid-19 lockdown in terms of Income, Employment/Government Scheme Rules, Debt & Finances, Housing, homelessness, welfare benefits and access to services, and to provide our specialised services effectively and making them as easily accessible as possible. Through the fund we were able to provide a 3 month dedicated service whereby 5 staff were funded to work full time on this project - solicitor, housing homelessness caseworker, welfare rights officer, Debt and Finances and Administration officer, providing legal and casework services to address the issues concerning the aforementioned target group(s)".

Another organisation offered remote support for households at risk of homelessness, which included advice on housing, money, debt and welfare, as well as emotional and practical support such as ensuring that they could access food parcels if necessary:

"Advisers provided a telephone-based support service with the assistance of existing volunteers to households at risk of homelessness. Through regular telephone appointments, households will have a dedicated adviser who will connect with them to fully understand and assess their housing, money & debt and welfare benefit situation. Where necessary advisers could issue mobile phones or credit to ensure households stayed in touch with them. Households will be directly referred to the service via our existing national helpline and online chat services, local partner organisations and we will undertake a targeted digital advertising campaign. We will also re-contact recent clients where paying rent, arrears or eviction action was a factor. To prevent households from disconnecting, each client will be assigned a dedicated volunteer who will provide emotional support and make sure households are accessing all the support available locally such as food parcel delivery services. Volunteers will be coordinated and supported by our Volunteer Manager."

Projects focusing on supporting victims of domestic abuse reported needing to adapt to the changing circumstances of the pandemic and increased demand to support people experiencing, or at risk of, harm in their own homes. One project, for example, sought funding to help provide effective interventions for women urgently needing accommodation to escape violent households during lockdown:

"Our project focused on the changing needs of our service provision in light of COVID-19 pandemic. This funding was anticipated to help women/families experiencing domestic abuse and at risk of harm in their own homes, unable to leave due to COVID-19 and for women requiring immediate support to re-settle. Due to decreased safe spaces forced by lockdown, we hoped the funding would enable a swift and effective intervention to mitigate further abuse or exploitation. Women told us they felt increasingly vulnerable as their abuser exploited lockdown as an opportunity to increase surveillance and use child contact as a means to control. We received an unprecedented volume of requests for refuge and support from other parts of UK outwith Scotland."

Other projects focused more on the provision of legal advice and support for people experiencing domestic violence. As one organisation described their role of providing a specialist legal service to which victims of abuse could be referred by other agencies:

"The project was intended to [provide] legal advice in relation to domestic abuse and housing. Lockdown, whilst necessary for public health, increased the difficulties by people at risk of domestic violence. Wider stakeholders contacted us with complex legal issues in relation to their clients; we were the only organisation in a position to provide a legal service of this nature. We also identified that a wider response may be required post-lockdown and we were aiming to prepare for this and work collaboratively with others to co-ordinate services for the future. We planned to use the funding to provide a response to this unmet legal need which we previously serviced but which was exacerbated by lockdown. In the first instance, the aim was to provide a consultation service for other stakeholders dealing with victims of domestic abuse on the front line. We were aware that many individuals would be reluctant to fully disclose their circumstances or report the abuse, particularly during lockdown when they were more at risk. However, we considered it vital to provide a legal service which could be accessed through a third party if individuals did reach out. The aim was to "layer up" the support available to this particularly vulnerable group of people."

Finally, several projects in the home life and housing situation category mentioned providing bereavement support for those who had recently lost loved ones. For example, one organisation aimed to:

"Offer supportive phone calls to previous clients during lockdown who were recently bereaved and experiencing poverty with an aim of improving their mental health and wellbeing and community connectedness during this period. [We aimed] to make 8 support calls/contacts per week totalling 100 calls over a 13-week period."

5.2.5 Money

21% of organisations said that their project related to money (192 projects), although only 13 of these projects (1.4% of all projects) were focused exclusively on money. Most projects focusing on money were, therefore, part of much a much wider range of support offered to individuals or families. For example, one organisation offered a wide range of support to members of the local community in need, including several measures relating to finances, poverty and benefits:

"The overall aim of the project was to deliver a support project for our community focusing on providing food, help with utilities and Friendship Calls. We wanted to make sure people were able to heat their homes and have a hot meal and hot water. We wanted to do Friendship Calls - a phone call twice a week to make sure that our clients are ok, checking on their general health and well-being, discussing any money or benefits issues, reassurance, mentoring and someone who will listen to how they are feeling. We wanted to help people to access benefits, maintain those benefits and help with food, utilities, advice and practical stuff such as form filling and all aspects of employability skills. We wanted to provide an emergency service for our clients who are all very vulnerable, are living in poverty, have lots of issues such as mental health, alcohol and/or drug abuse, lack of support networks, chronic health conditions, poor literacy, poor IT skills and no access to the internet. We also wanted to help people with budgeting and money management, meal planning, picking up and delivering prescriptions and advising people on the coronavirus lockdown measures and symptoms of coronavirus and next steps."

Many organisations did not specify exactly what money-related support they offered their service users beyond efforts to alleviate food and digital poverty, for example via foodbank referrals, the provision of free food, and the provision of phones, tablets, or mobile data. These types of projects are discussed in more detail elsewhere in this chapter.

Most commonly, where projects specified the nature of their focus on money, they provided money advice, advocacy, signposting to financial support, and/or hardship funds for people whose financial struggles may have been precipitated or exacerbated by the pandemic.

Many of these organisations focused on adapting existing forms of support for vulnerable individuals and families. For example, one organisation focused on supporting clients with disabilities to maximise their incomes:

"The overall aim of the project was to provide services to clients during the lockdown. In particular we identified clients with disabilities who had problems with benefits and ensured that their income was maximised. In addition to providing help with benefits and debt, we also ensured that clients had access to additional services. This initially meant ensuring clients had sufficient food by referring them to the Foodbank where necessary."

Several organisations recognised that, given the loss of jobs caused by the pandemic, support would be needed for people who had lost their jobs and had found themselves financially vulnerable for the first time. For example, one organisation which runs a letting agency as a social enterprise reported that:

"We have 163 people who have lost their jobs, been furloughed or with jobs at risk, with 45 of them now requiring first time support with benefits and mental health. 36 people found themselves in rent arrears for the first time, and required support to access Universal Credit and other benefit advice to prevent arrears from escalating… [We have put in place] increased, rapid response and ongoing benefits and specialist income support advice where needed due to change in circumstances to prevent poverty and rent arrears, including advocacy with DWP on behalf of tenants who struggle to navigate the online Universal Credit portals"

Similarly, a housing association used the funding to bring in a financial advisor to support their residents who had lost their jobs or been furloughed during the pandemic:

"Since many of our residents had been furloughed or made redundant, we had high demand for financial advice so we wanted to have a financial advisor on hand to offer help with welfare benefit advice, applying for Universal Credit, energy advice and vouchers and grants as well as helping with budgeting, emergency grants and debt."

Some organisations used the funding to create discretionary hardship funds for their users. For example, one organisation which works with vulnerable families and their children said that they:

"…put aside £3000 of the grant to be used for a discretionary fund. This enabled us to support any families that were in need of essential items they perhaps could not afford themselves due to the ongoing pandemic."

Similarly, another organisation provided funds for those who needed it to pay for their utilities costs:

"The project aimed to assist individuals and families who had suffered financial hardship due to Covid 19. The funding was used to provide people on prepayment meters with emergency top up credit vouchers at a time when they were unable to afford basics due to income changes."

Finally, some of the projects focusing on money used the funding to adapt existing services to allow them to continue remotely after the introduction of the lockdown. One credit union, for example, described their use of the funding:

"The funding provided tablets to enable Zoom meetings to take place with our directors so that in this time of crisis good governance of the credit union would continue. This was a challenge as some of our Directors [had not] heard of Zoom. We… have been having weekly Covid-19 meetings since then. The directors also have smaller sub meetings together which has been fantastic for the ongoing running and governance of the credit union while many of our directors are shielding. This has meant the Directors could make hands on decisions about the credit union like reducing and freezing accounts and the impact this can have on the credit union. [We also adapted] our loan policy to better fit the current economic climate, financial projections and budget negotiations."

Like other organisations, however, this credit union also used the funding to offer a wider service of support to its members, conducting wellbeing calls and delivering food parcels, as well as offering extra support to their most vulnerable members:

"We also had a vulnerable group that we called on a weekly basis just so that they had contact while shielding from the outside world and had a friendly voice at the end of the phone. Sometimes just to check in and see if we could help in any way. We signposted members to our local money advice services so that they could gain access to any benefits they may be entitled to and supplied food parcels to those in need. We helped members access web pages through the credit union office who had no internet access at home so that they could access help through the government websites and DWP and provided access to a telephone to make any calls. We are at present looking to apply to continue the Wellbeing Project as it has had such a positive impact on our members and our members' feedback has been fantastic."

5.2.6 Employment

13% of organisations said that their project related to employment (119 projects), although only 7 of these projects (0.8% of all projects) were focused exclusively on employment. As these figures indicate, only a small number of these 119 projects focused either entirely on predominantly on employment. Many appeared to be only indirectly connected to employment, for example projects focusing on providing food or financial support to those experiencing financial difficulties.

Among the projects focusing more substantially on issues relating to employment, most commonly the projects funded by the Wellbeing Fund were adaptations of existing services, with the aim of enabling them to be provided remotely. In some cases, organisations also sought to use their move to remote delivery to expand their reach among their target populations. Several organisations focused particularly on employability among young people. One organisation, for example, offered free remote access to employability skills along with fitness and wellbeing activities for young people:

"The overall aim of our project was to expand our delivery of a free packaged service for young people to access which focused on developing core employability skills coupled with fitness and wellbeing. Our intention was to equip and enhance young people with employability skills and to improve the overall physical and mental wellbeing during lockdown."

Another organisation, which ordinarily provides employability skills training to school-aged young people, also moved its services online, and provided a range of support including:

• live interactive barista and cooking workshops;
• live interactive sessions on developing CVs and job searching;
• and an online learning platform to facilitate support with SQA qualifications.

These were targeted towards the most vulnerable and disadvantaged young people who were thought most likely to need support during the lockdown.

As well as vulnerable young people, other groups were specifically targeted for employability support, including people with specific disabilities or mental health conditions. For example, one organisation which supports people with visual and/or hearing impairments used the funding in part to continue funding an Employment Officer to support those who might lose their job or face furlough as a result of the pandemic:

"…the funding would support the continued activities of our Employment Officer in supporting our sensory impaired service users through furlough, redundancy, and urgent welfare applications."

While most organisations focused on using the funding to adapt existing projects to remote delivery, at least one organisation took a more creative approach, using the funding to offer paid work to some of their existing volunteers in order to both increase the capacity of the organisation to respond to the Covid-19 crisis and provide valuable work experience to their volunteers:

"We applied for the Wellbeing Fund to allow us to employ and offer sessional hours to a group of our current volunteers. We wanted to offer our volunteers a paid position, to experience paid work, participate in training, building skills and knowledge, build their personal capacity to enter the world of full time employment, for some for the first time. In turn [they could] offer their personal skills, experience and knowledge that they all had to offer our service and its service users. Having the extra capacity allowed full time staff to divert their role into essential local service delivery (e.g. supporting our NHS colleagues to deliver medication/methadone to clients who were self-isolating). We were able to support several community pharmacies who were experiencing significant challenges with long queues of people, social distancing issues and general safety issues. This was a very positive piece of work and reduced demand on Police Scotland time and resource."

5.2.7 Other

As Figure 14 shows, 26.5% (243) of organisations specified activities or services within the "other" category. 353 separate activities or services were specified under "other". These were coded into categories, with the most common (those mentioned 20 times or more) shown in Figure 15 below. By far the most common category (mentioned on 66 occasions) was that of activities and services relating to digital inclusion, with organisations initiating a range of projects including giving or lending digital devices to service users, providing internet connections, and helping service users learn to use these devices to stay connected.

The second-most common category was recreational activities, with 36 mentions of activities or services – including games, crafts and gardening activities – aimed at providing both children and adults with activities to do during the lockdown.

Several organisations stated that they used some of the funding to help with operational activities, including projects to recruit and train volunteers, research their users' needs and pay for essential costs such as staff, rent and storage. This suggests that some of the funding was used for purposes outside of the criteria for spending the grant, although this was relatively uncommon.

A further 30 mentions were made of activities and services involving the provision of essential items (excluding food and digital technology). These included clothes, baby clothes and maternity items, furniture, and toiletries.

Guidance, information and advice were common services provided (29 mentions), as well as activities relating to education and training (29 mentions). In most cases, guidance, information and advice services appeared to relate to guidance on concerns arising either directly or indirectly from the Covid-19 pandemic, while educational activities and services ranged from educational resources and activities for children who were missing out on school to training for newly recruited volunteers.

Finally, 20 mentions of the activities and services under "other" related to tackling loneliness and isolation, with organisations setting up social activities online as well as conducting befriending and wellbeing calls for people who might be struggling during lockdown.