Comic Relief: Care Home Challenge Fund
Overview
Comic Relief’s grant scheme will make 20 grants of between £10,000-£20,000 to care home providers from across the UK. Grants will last for between 18-24 months including time for planning, partnership building and delivery. They envisage that each grant will reach a maximum of 4-5 care homes, focussing on quality of delivery led by residents and care home staff rather than volume of people.
This initiative sits under their ‘Health and Wellbeing’ programme area, so they are interested in accepting applications which encourage physical or mental activity, movement and increased mobility, social connections and engagement for residents. This may involve sporting activities such as martial arts or dance, but could also include other forms of gentle leisure/recreational activities such as gardening. Mentally stimulating work may include reminiscence and arts based activities, singing, reading groups etc. They are interested in supporting work which supports residents with a range of abilities.
Funding Criteria
They will prioritise applications which:
- Involve residents and staff taking part in meaningful activities together, and protect staff members’ time to ensure their full participation
- Partner with a third-party activity provider which has a good understanding of the care home context and residents’ needs
- Are ‘person-centred’, planning the work in response to residents’ needs and interests, involving residents in co-designing activities, and respecting people’s choice to participate.
- Demonstrate a clear commitment to the proposed activity from the care homes involved, particularly from the managers and activity coordinators.
- Support staff to build skills and confidence so they can facilitate or deliver activities, enabling sustainability beyond the life of the project.
- Show how they are building on the findings from Round One. The Evaluation Report can be found here.
Eligibility
Organisations applying to this fund must meet Comic Relief’s general eligibility requirements (see links below). In addition, please note:
- Applicants must be UK-based care home providers, registered with the Care Quality Commission, Care Inspectorate (Scotland), Care and Social Services Inspectorate Wales or the Regulation and Quality Improvement Authority (NI).
- Charity and non-charity care home providers may apply. For applicants that are non-charities, they will carry out an appropriate level of risk assessment to ensure that (among other things) any grant will further their charitable purposes and will only be used for the charitable activities described in your proposal. Any grant made will be subject to satisfactory completion of that risk assessment.
- In order to target the fund where they can make most difference, they will ask applicants to give their current inspection rating relating to person centred care and wellbeing and to explain how the funding requested will enable them to improve provision in this area.
- Care home providers whose homes benefitted from funding in the first round of the Care Home Challenge Fund may apply to this second round, but only for work based in different homes. Individual homes which were supported through Round One funding may not benefit again in Round Two.
- Activity providers that were involved in projects funded in Round One may apply in round two as a partner. The application must be led by a care home provider.
- Successful applicants will be expected to participate fully in an evaluation of the fund.
Relevant documents/links
Helpful documents and resources