New funding to improve health and wellbeing in Suffolk and Essex
Howard Lake | 26 April 2019 | News
The Suffolk and Essex Community Foundations have been awarded a £2 million contract from the ‘Realising Ambition’ initiative.
The initiative brings together primary care, social services and the voluntary sector to improve health services identified by three local alliances (East Suffolk, West Suffolk and North East Essex). Essex Community Foundation will be launching the new funding initiative in May and grants will be awarded in North East Essex.
Improving mental health, reducing suicides, tackling obesity, improving end of life care and combating loneliness are key priorities for the Integrated Care System (ICS).
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ICS leaders say that the distribution of the money across the three areas
- Ipswich and East Suffolk
- North East Essex
- West Suffolk
will be based on a number of factors, including local levels of deprivation.
Social prescribing
Dr John Hague, Mental Health Lead for the Suffolk and North East Essex Shadow ICS and GP in Ipswich, said: “This is a fantastic opportunity which will bring health, care, volunteers and the public together to bring about real improvements for local people and communities. We have been working with the community foundations and voluntary sector in setting up social prescribing – a scheme which links patients needing GP or primary care with sources of support within the community. With ‘Realising Ambition’, we will be building on this way of working and expanding it to include other priorities for our system.”
ICS Programme Director, Susannah Howard, said: “We know that making a difference to complex population outcomes is very difficult. We are therefore asking leaders within each of the three main areas to determine their local priorities… Voluntary and community organisations will… be invited by the Suffolk and Essex Community Foundation’s to submit proposals for projects where they believe a broader contribution could be made towards achieving the system’s higher ambitions.”
Caroline Taylor, chief executive of Essex Community Foundation, said: “Empowering communities with resources to tackle the issues impacting local people, is at the heart of what we do. This new initiative brings together public sector partners with the voluntary sector and vital funding so that we can improve health and well-being in our local communities.”
You can follow Essex Community Foundation on Twitter @Essex_CF or on Facebook to keep up-to-date on the launch.
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About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.