Health projects funded

Lesley Mort, NHS HMR CCG Chief Officer

Local charities, community and voluntary organisations are receiving funding for a range of health-related projects.

A total of 99 projects have secured one-off grants of between £5,000 and £25,000 from NHS Heywood, Middleton and Rochdale Clinical Commissioning Group’s (HMR CCG) social investment fund.

To receive a grant, projects had to demonstrate health and community benefits to the Rochdale borough through:

• Promoting and supporting a healthy lifestyle and independence
• Supporting new mothers and families around breastfeeding
• Supporting women around breast cancer screening
• Supporting people with dementia including carers and families
• Supporting people with learning disabilities including carers and families
• Supporting people to manage their own health and wellbeing
• Promoting mental wellbeing

In addition to the £1 million of grants awarded to new projects, £500,000 was shared between those schemes from last year (2012/13) that were able to demonstrate meeting their targets. This will enable local projects and initiatives that have made a real impact on local health to continue their work or extend their aspirations.

A panel including representatives from HMR CCG, local voluntary sector partners and independent providers The Charity Service reviewed all the applications and made decisions on which can really make a difference in the heart of communities and further build on the successes in health and wellbeing improvements made during phase one of the social investment fund programme last year.

The grants awarded were made up of the following:

• 15 small grants of up to £5,000 
• 15 large grants of up to £25,000 
• 31 grants as part of group consortium bids 
• 38 projects from 2013/13 awarded a continuation grant

Successful bids include: 

• Thunderbolt School of Boxing – for children in deprived areas 
• Communitea cancer awareness – targeted breast cancer awareness for hard-to-reach BME groups 
• Growing communities – gardening activities for the elderly 
• Football Phil's weekly sessions – football in the community for all ages
• Sohail Ahmad received £24,750 for his Milkstone and Deeplish health initiative which aims to launch in February.

He said: “Our project is about bringing people together in the Milkstone and Deeplish community and reducing isolation.

"We want to help improve people’s health and wellbeing, giving them information and choices, not only to improve their physical health, but their mental health as well. Our volunteers will go out into the community and spend time with people in their homes to help reduce isolation.

"We’ll also be taking people out to make new connections outside their community.

"We’ll be monitoring and reviewing the activity throughout the year so we can learn lessons and make improvements as we go.”

Dr Chris Duffy, local GP and Chairman of NHS HMR CCG, said: “The health benefits seen from the grants we awarded through the first phase of the social investment fund in 2012/13 have been huge.

"I’m proud that HMR CCG has been able to play a part in making a real difference to local people’s lives through things like the Rochdale Carers’ Choir to a scheme supporting young people with disabilities to complete their Duke of Edinburgh award.

“We’ve funded even more innovative and varied schemes and projects this year and I’m excited to see them develop and help support local people to become healthier and have a better future.”

Lesley Mort, HMR CCG Chief Officer, said: “The introduction of the social investment fund has challenged us to think differently about how we work as a new organisation, and how we develop relationships with the third sector and other providers to improve health outcomes and quality of life for the people of our borough.”