Reaching Out: Supporting Families

Overview

The Reaching Out: Supporting Families programme will tackle some of the issues affecting families across Northern Ireland including addiction, poverty, mental ill-health and separation. BIG’s mission is to support people and communities most in need so they expect the projects they fund to help families facing challenges such as separation, absence of a key family member, poverty, substance abuse, disability, social isolation, homelessness, physical and/or emotional abuse.

Supporting Families will award grants of between £500,000 and £700,000 to projects that will help families to improve their children’s lives by building strong and nurturing relationships. The programme will support children under the age of 12 and their families facing a range of challenges.

Support for children during their childhood is more likely to be effective if parents and the wider family are involved. By families they mean children and their parents or carers, as well as wider family members, such as grandparents and siblings.

To be successful it’s important that the projects they fund understand and complement the range of relevant strategies and activities in Northern Ireland. These include:

• Families Matter
• The Child Poverty Strategy
• Care Matters NI
• Our Children and Young People – Our Pledge United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child

Criteria

The aim of this programme is to support families in Northern Ireland to improve their children’s lives by building strong and nurturing relationships. They are looking for the projects that we fund to have a measurable impact on families with children under the age of 12.

Specifically BIG want all funded projects to make the following changes called programme outcomes:

• more families will have greater skills, knowledge and understanding to overcome adversity
• more children and their families will come together and learn
• more children and their families will be part of the community that they live in.

Successful applicants will demonstrate that their project will meet these three programme outcomes.

Who can apply

BIG want the projects they fund to connect with and add value to existing work helping children and their families. Evidence shows that integrated approaches like this are likely to be more successful. Therefore, they will only accept applications from organisations working in partnership. By working in partnership they mean working with other organisations to plan and carry out your project. You might work with organisations from another sector or organisations that have specialist knowledge.

Only voluntary or community sector organisations may apply as the lead organisation in a partnership. The lead organisation must be one of the following:

• unincorporated association, trust or company set up and registered as a charity
• unincorporated association set up as a voluntary and community group
• community interest company
• not for profit company limited by guarantee
• community benefit society organisation recognised by HM Revenue and Customs as exempt for tax purposes.

The lead organisation will apply for funding, manage and run the project. If you are awarded funding, you must have a written agreement with the partner organisations which clearly explains each partner’s roles, responsibilities and how you will be working together for the whole project.

Each lead organisation can only hold one grant from this programme but could be involved in other projects as a partner. However, they will consider the capacity of partners involved in multiple projects during their assessment. Statutory and/or private organisations can be part of a partnership and we strongly support and encourage working between different sectors.

What you can apply for

Among the costs applicable some examples are listed below - this list is nor exhaustive

• some or all of your project costs for five years
• building or refurbishment work, capital equipment or vehicles essential to the delivery of your project up to a maximum of £70,000
• a contribution towards your overheads.