Grants

Grants Programme Guidelines

Positive Transitions to Independent Living

Aims of the Programme
There are times in all our lives when we face key transitions such as moving from childhood into adolescence, adolescence into adulthood, leaving home or leaving care and becoming parents.

Sometimes “transitions” are very painful and difficult. Most of us have the support and advice of our friends and family to help us through. Some of us are particularly vulnerable or may be facing especially difficult challenges. We may need additional or specialist help to signpost us in the right direction so that we can manage the new stage successfully.

We want to support specialist work to sustain people through some of the hardest transitions and challenges which people face. This programme aims to improve the range of services for people that we think get the least support from mainstream services.

What will we fund?

• Services for people with a newly acquired disability to help them maintain choice and control in their lives.
• Work assisting young disabled people with the transition to adulthood, such as managing the move from residential care to independent living or supporting disabled school leavers into employment, college or a community resource.
• Support for disabled people in managing independent living and ‘personal budgets’.
• Work supporting disabled parents including those with learning disabilities.
• Work with young care leavers preparing for independent living, helping raise their educational and employment aspirations, and supporting them in their new accommodation.
• Resettlement work with ex-offenders leaving custody.

Please specify on your application form which of these themes your project is addressing.

Making a Difference
We want to fund projects that really make a difference to people’s lives. We would like to know how our funding has helped achieve positive changes or “outcomes”. We want you to tell us how your work will contribute to our overall programme outcomes. You will need to demonstrate that your project can contribute to one or more of these and that you have systems in place to collect information on numbers of people who have benefited, and how you will measure the changes your work has brought about.

Our Programme Outcomes
We want to fund projects that will achieve one or more of the following:

• more disabled people reporting increased choice and control in their lives
• more disabled people successfully living independently
• more young disabled people taking up educational or employment opportunities and making positive choices about their lives
• more disabled parents managing their parental responsibilities successfully
• more care-leavers living independently and maintaining their accommodation
• more care-leavers taking up educational opportunities or employment and making positive choices about their lives
• more ex-offenders successfully resettled within the community and re-offending reduced.

If your application is successful, we will ask you to report regularly on your progress in reaching these outcomes although we recognise that some of these will be long-term. In addition, we will be interested to hear about other outcomes that you may have achieved as well as any unexpected issues that have added to your learning.

Please contact us if you are unclear on what an ‘outcome’ means in your area of work.

Good Practice
Please show how you:

• involve service-users in the management and running of the service
• welcome people of all backgrounds and value diversity
• value and support volunteers
• are taking steps to reduce your carbon footprint.