ADD2411 Team London Small Grants Additional Grantees

The annual Team London small grants programme delivers the Mayor’s priorities to work with communities and civil society groups across London. The grants encourage active participation in community and civic life, support Londoners of all ages to volunteer and encourage Londoners to take action to improve London. Team London has strong partnerships within the public, private and third sectors, and leverages these relationships to support Londoners.

Team London’s annual Small Grants programme offers funding of up to £10,000 to third sector organisations who are seeking support to run volunteering projects which are in line with Mayor’s priorities. The grants have a different theme every year. In 2018/2019 the funded projects were designed to encourage social integration.

In 2019/20 the Small Grants are funding projects which address the issue of social isolation and loneliness. Social problems such as loneliness, housing, employability and debt can affect both physical and mental health and wellbeing. Around one in five visits to the GP are for non-clinical reasons and therefore, social prescribing can help address these root causes and help patients improve their health. All funded projects will form links with social prescribers in order to recruit both volunteers and beneficiaries. This is in line with one of the Mayor’s five key ambitions within the London Health Inequalities Strategy, which is to ensure that social prescribing becomes a routine part of community support across the capital, particularly for those in vulnerable or deprived communities.

Social prescribing enables a holistic approach to health and recognises that a person’s mental wellbeing and resilience can be positively impacted outside of the realm of clinical medicine. Social prescribing is a way of connecting patients with community services and groups within their local area to improve their health and wellbeing. Examples of social prescriptions can include physical activity, exercise classes, gardening, educational classes, befriending projects or social activities.

£100,000 of the Small Grants budget for 19/20 was approved under cover of MD2426. The quality of applications this year was high and influenced Team London’s request to grant funding additional to that which was previously approved. 98 applications for funding were received this year and many focussed on how the projects could strengthen the referral routes from the NHS and Local Authority Schemes. Obtaining funding to support an additional five grantees, bringing the total to ten, means that the projects will impact a wider range of beneficiaries and reach more London boroughs.

Objectives

The main objective of this funding is to support third sector organisations to make links with and impact the lives of those who are socially isolated and lonely within London’s communities. Every project funded will be working with the aim to reduce social isolation and feelings of loneliness in their beneficiaries.

The second objective of the funding is to encourage the grantees to form strong links with local social prescribers such as GPs and Mental Health support workers in order to create clear referral pathways for beneficiaries and volunteers to be referred to them.

Targets

For a total of 400 volunteers to be giving their time across the 15 funded projects. 25% of all volunteers recruited to the funded projects will be new to volunteering (ie not having volunteered in the last 12 months)

For over 10,000 hours of volunteering hours to be delivered across all fifteen projects, over the course of 12 months.

Outputs

All 15 grantee organisations will sign a funding agreement in which they state their commitment to measure a set of standardised outputs and outcomes, in order to measure the impact of their projects. Each grantee will also measure outputs and outcomes which are unique to their project.

The standardised outputs which every grantee must measure and report on in their mid- year report (July 2020) and the final project report (January 2021) are:

(a) number of volunteers involved in the project;
(b) number of volunteers which are new to volunteering;
(c) number of volunteer hours dedicated to the project;
(d) number of new Social Prescribing partnerships established; and
(e) number of beneficiaries participating in the project from January 2020 to December 2020.

Outcomes

The standardised outcomes which every grantee must measure and report on in their mid- year report (July 2020) and the final project report (January 2021) are in the form of a questionnaire which will be answered by every beneficiary. These are in addition to project specific outcomes will each organisation will monitor and report on too.

These monitoring questions are taken from the Campaign Against Loneliness’s Measurement Tool and are designed to determine the level of social isolation beneficiaries are experiencing at the start and end of the project they have participated in. These questions have been agreed with input from the Communities and Intelligence Team. They are as follows:

(a) I am content with my friendships and relationships (beneficiaries will indicate their level of agreement with this statement);
(b) I have enough people I feel comfortable asking for help at any time; and
(c) My relationships are as satisfying as I would want them to be.

Under Section 149 of the Equality Act 2010, as a public authority, the GLA must have ‘due regard’ of the need to:

• Eliminate unlawful discrimination, harassment and victimisation; and

• Advance equality of opportunity and foster good relations between people who have a protected characteristic and those who do not.

Equal opportunities are enshrined within Team London and Sport’s programmes. Team London and Sport volunteering projects aim to ensure that all Londoners can access volunteering opportunities and indeed by doing so support other Londoners equally throughout the city.

Social prescribing supporting individuals to deal with a range of issues that affect their health and wellbeing can benefit everyone but is of particular advantage to those with multiple, complex health and other needs such as housing issues and access to social welfare legal advice. Some existing schemes focus on specific medical issues or age-groups, for example, long-term conditions such as diabetes, and older people. Therefore, social prescribing has the potential to have a positive impact on multiple groups with protected characteristics under the Equality Act 2010.

Key risks and issues

Links to Mayoral Strategies and Priorities

1. These grants and their focus on social prescribing are in line with the Mayor’s Health Inequalities strategy. One of its five key ambitions is to ensure that social prescribing becomes a routine part of community support across the capital, particularly for those in vulnerable or deprived communities. Social Prescribing is where people receive non-medical help to improve their health and well-being, usually through accessing community activities through the VCSE (voluntary community and social enterprise sector) in their local area. At least 20 per cent of people visit their GP for non-medical reasons and social prescribing is a way of ensuring that they get the most appropriate support. The Health Team’s contribution to the development of these grants means that the grantees have been selected because of their knowledge about social prescribing and their willingness to develop links with social prescribers in their areas, in line with the Mayor’s vision for social prescribing in London.

1. Although it is not the primary focus of these grants, each of these projects will also contribute to social integration for the beneficiaries and the volunteers, by providing them the opportunity to interact and socialise across boundaries of age, race, gender, sexual orientation, social class and religious/political views. Improving social integration is one of the Mayor’s key strategies and he has described it as one of the biggest challenges facing Londoners in the 21^st century. Improvements in social integration mean that Londoners will be able to build meaningful and lasting relationships with one another, contributing to the strength of their communities. These grants create an opportunity socially isolated and lonely people to participate in their community and have positive and meaningful interactions.

1. Team London delivers these small grants under the remit of being the Mayor’s volunteering programme. Every project which is funded through the small grants is required to set a target of recruiting a certain amount of volunteers and at 25% of these volunteers must be new to volunteering. In setting this target, Team London is ensuring that the grants are in line with the Mayor’s focus on volunteering as a way of encouraging people to become active citizens, contributing to a more unified city.
3. Conflict of interest has been considered as part of this programme. In order to ensure that all applications were assessed fairly, all 99 applications received were assessed by a team of eight officers from Team London. All applications were scored against the eligibility criteria and a scoring system was used to assess them objectively and transparently. The application forms completed by the applicants also set out the score for each question, ensuring they were clear on the process of assessment. Once scored, all applications were moderated by the panel feedback was made available to applicants who were not successful. The panel considered any conflicts of interest relating to their own existing relationships or work, none of which were found to exist.

MD2426 approved £100,000 of funding towards Team London’s small grants programmes. The GLA’s Health team are making a further contribution to this programme of £20,000 (under the cover of DD2419). As detailed within this report, due to the high quality of applications and the importance of social prescribing to the Mayoral priorities, this decision is seeking to make an additional £24,000 available for this programme, thus bringing to maximum value of the small grants programme to £144,000.

The additional £24,000 will be funded from within the Team London & Community Sports Programme budget for 2019-20 (£15,000) and 2020-21 (£9,000), specifically the Rewards and Recognition and Microgrants element of the budget respectively.