To apply for a grant, the following conditions must be met..
The committee must be officially recognised by the landlord of the site.
Must have a written and signed constitution.
Have a bank account with 3 signatories.
Have a forwarding address and named contact.
The Board of Trustees meet 4 times each year and any application for funding is discussed and decided upon at these meetings.
The amount of funding that can be applied for will be on the scale of £250 (Minimum) to £2,000 (Maximum) per applicant.
The amount of funding that is awarded to each applicant will be at the discretion of the Board of Trustees and may not necessarily be the total sum that is applied for.
If your completed application form is accepted it may be necessary for one of the trustees to contact the committee submitting the application so a telephone contact number should be shown.
Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (Cilip) to create a guide titled A Warm Welcome, which sets out tips and guidance for libraries who want to offer themselves as warm banks.
The guide says that warm spaces need to “be free to use and encourage people to stay as long as they want”. The space also “needs to be a friendly, comfortable environment where people feel at ease and at home”. Safety is also key, and the space should be accessible to everyone with those considering becoming a warm bank looking “at barriers that may prevent this, not just for wheelchair users, but also for visitors with additional or special needs”.
A survey earlier this year by Libraries Connected, a charity which represents public libraries, found that nearly 60% are actively considering taking part in a warm bank scheme. However, just 4% of library leaders expect to receive any extra funding for this activity.
Is your organisation thinking of setting up a warm space this year?
The Adult Mental Health and Wellbeing Team, part of Essex County Council, are running another Men4MentalHealth course starting in November. It is for any man feeling low, experiencing a lack of motivation, loss of direction, struggling in their relationships or struggling in any other way with their mental health.
The course is open to any man living in Essex (excluding Southend and Thurrock) aged between 18 and 65.
The course will be running on Tuesdays, between 5pm-7pm, held over 6 consecutive weeks. Start date yet to be confirmed.
Men can either attend in person or virtually. If wanting to join virtually, they can attend the session using their mobile/laptop/computer/tablet from the comfort of their own home and join with members at the in person session.
The location for the face to face sessions will be in Chelmsford near the train station.
We’ve already had some fantastic feedback from previous cohorts:
“the course gave me useful strategies for coping with mental health”
“it helped hearing other people’s stories and how even though we had different circumstances, we still helped and supported each other and had similar issues”
“I thought it was facilitated extremely well”
“I liked the fact that the group was online, because I was in the safety of my own environment, it was less anxiety provoking”
“it made me feel that I wasn’t alone. I now know that there are other people in the same boat”
“I was really in a bad place and now I’m out of that place, I’ve made friends and learnt a lot of things about my mental health, and learnt about other people’s mental health”
“I really can’t stress what a difference to my life you and Lucy have made… I can’t thank you enough.”
If you know of men who would like to attend, all we ask is for them to contact the team as soon as possible. The number is 0333 032 2958 and email is [email protected].
If you have any questions please feel free in get in contact with them.
Supporting the arts, culture and creative industries in Essex.
The Essex County Council Arts and Cultural fund has been designed to help organisations and practitioners to deliver a broad and exciting range of work and activity to engage with and bring communities together.
*Open for Expressions of Interest for 2023 from Saturday 1 October to Monday 31 October 2022*
The arts, cultural and creative projects, such as festivals and exhibitions, all contribute to helping communities recover from the pandemic and play an integral part in enabling the objectives of Essex County Council’s wider objectives as set out in Everyone’s Essex.
Creative and cultural sectors are at the forefront of economic and social regeneration in our region. One of the aims of the fund is to provide a boost for the creative and cultural sector which will enable organisations and practioners to develop long term and sustainable future for arts and culture in the county.
The ECC Arts and Cultural Fund will offer artists and cultural organisations grants from £2,500 to £30,000 to deliver projects to help support and rejuvenate the Essex arts and culture sector, as well as the county’s towns and city high streets.
The fund will support projects, which will contribute to ECC’s Everyone’s Essex: The Plan for Essex 2021-2025 within the music, theatre, dance, visual arts, literature, combined arts, including festivals and carnivals, museums and the wider creative sectors.
Help Finder enables charities to save money on goods and services they normally have to pay for and to source expert support they wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford. It searches 100s and 100s of organisation to find advice, pro bono support and free goods & services. There are 19 search categories, with everything from fundraising support, consultancy and IT through to volunteering, legal and consumer goods. Watch the 2 min demo video to see how it works and find out more here. If you wish to be included in Help Finder, just send me a link and 50 words. It doesn’t matter, if your support is only country or region specific, as I can tag your location, and it helps if you include your services in the text, as the directory has a key word search.
It’s just part of our comprehensive free programme to support non-profits through the cost-of-living crisis. Charities are really struggling, and we need you to help us help as many as possible by sharing this e mail, including the details below on your website or in your newsletter and posting on social media.
Find the crisis funding and help you need with our #SurviveAndThrive programme – a one-stop-shop that enables anyone to find the grant funding, advice, resources, pro bono support, data and free goods and services their charity needs. There are 3 very simple to use databases:
Funding Finder – click through to more funders than any other grants directory, including categories for Crisis Funding, Core Funding and Small Charities & Community Groups.
Help Finder – searches 100s of organisations to find advice, pro bono support and free goods and services to save you money.
Data Finder – finds data for funding bids, fundraising research, impact reporting, planning and campaigning.
We are very excited to announce the launch of the VVU Community Grants funding for 2023-2024.
As a partnership, our strategic goal is to reduce serious violence, the harm it causes, and to safeguard those at risk (relating to county lines, gangs and knife crime). We recognise that local organisations and groups are at the forefront of some amazing work that takes place to address these issues and we would like to support this work further as much as we can.
Our 2022-2024 VVCS grant round is for local *’not for profit’ voluntary or community clubs or organisations based in (and therefore delivering in) Essex, Southend and Thurrock only, and we are looking to fund projects that meet our stated aims and can run from April 2023- 31st March 2024.
Groups can apply for up to **£20,000 to deliver support and interventions for children, young people, young adults and families (families must include children and young people, and ‘young person’ is defined as up to the age of 25). Projects must demonstrate how they have a positive impact on issues relating to crime and anti-social behaviour and violence and vulnerability. This may include early intervention work, gang & ‘county lines’, and child criminal exploitation projects.
**Our grants funding this year has a total pot of just under £156,000 that we will look to distribute as evenly as possible across the 12 ECC districts/ Quadrants plus Southend & Thurrock. Please bear this is mind when completing your applications.
We would be particularly interested in projects that can evidence they are meeting needs as highlighted by young people and local residents in our Listening Project 2021-2022.
You can read the full report here https://ecvys.files.wordpress.com/2022/03/vvu-listening-2021-2022-youth-report-final.pdf The report only focuses on 7 Districts in Essex, but the fund is open to all (including Southend & Thurrock). Some examples of need highlighted in the report are-
Indoor/ outdoor safe spaces with affordable & inclusive activities for young people to socialise (this can include a one off cost for lighting the outside of voluntary group spaces to create a safer space for young people, additional staff or youth activities).
• Opportunities for young people to learn life skills, participate in community based or volunteering projects and undertake work experience
• Work with young people and their families to raise awareness of youth violence
• Projects that promote greater communication and positive engagement between the police, youth groups and schools
• Targeted youth work aimed at those young people most at risk of exploitation
• Support for victims of youth violence
• Drugs education in informal settings or led by voluntary groups in schools with evidenced links to how drug use relates to young people becoming involved in serious violence
The fund is open to work of all ages from 0-25 but we would especially like to see some applications for creative work around risk taking behaviours with primary school age children and their families.
Please do read the listening report and try to evidence the need for your intervention within your application, referencing the listening report or local needs if your district is not one of the 7 listed.
All applications must demonstrate how their project enables children & young people to-
• Make positive choices that keep them safe
• Raise self-esteem and confidence
• Build resilience
• Improve emotional and physical health and mental wellbeing
• Have a letter of support from the local CSP
*PLEASE NOTE THAT: Your organisation MUST have a recognised constitution and be a- not for profit voluntary or community club or organisation, a registered Charity, A not for profit company or community interest company or other social enterprise. company limited by guarantee, charitable incorporated organisation or Registered society.
Applications open: 15th August 2022 Applications close: 31st October 2022 Completed applications to be sent to [email protected]and[email protected] Short listing, due diligence checks and final panel decisions will happen from November 2022-February 2023 Applicants made aware of grant decisions: End of February 2023 Funds to be with groups For the project start date in April 2023
To download an application form with further guidance on applying please click the link below:
You can also apply online using this link https://forms.gle/qLaoT2atPZMvrioD8 (please note though that any due diligence forms requested will need to be emailed separately to Rachel and Jim (emails above).
Healthwatch Essex is working in partnership with Hertfordshire and West Essex ICB to produce a report on the difficulties in accessing GP services for children and young people under the age of 25. The report will be used in evolving and shaping the new ICS Primary Care strategy and we are looking to engage with as many local residents as possible to get the widest range of people’s experiences we can.
If you are in any way able to help promote the online survey through your professional contacts and marketing streams, we would be extremely grateful. If you can put it in a newsletter, email it to your database, text the link to your service users, pop in on your social media threads, link to it from your website, mention it in meetings – or anything similar you can think of, I would be very, very grateful.
The more reach we can get, the more we can do!!
The brief project outline and link to the survey is below.
I am also happy to provide and images or similar if that would help.
Thanks so much for any help you can provide.
GP Access for Children and young people under 25 has never been more important!
Have you tried to access GP services for your child in West Essex? Whether your experience has been good or bad, we would like to hear from you through our online survey.
We are exploring how to make improvements in the system to ensure every child and young person gets timely and effective access to quality care and support.
You can give us vital, real-life insight, and help make a difference!
Please take just two minutes to complete our survey today. Survey responses are completely anonymous, but if you wish to tell us more about your experience, you can give your contact details at the end.
A new raft of measures and money to help families battle against increasing cost of living pressures has been announced by Essex County Council.
The plans include support to help households pay for insulation and other energy saving improvements at home, a community led ‘winter warmth and welcome’ campaign to provide local places for winter warmth over the coming months, including a grant scheme to help groups fund activities, and additional funding to help vulnerable people with essential costs.
A number of support initiatives are already underway with others due to launch in mid-October onwards. This plan will continue to evolve and will respond to the changing needs of people and communities in Essex.
The plans span across the voluntary sector and public sector across the county and, in November, Essex County Council will be hosting a summit with partners to ensure all public service agencies are working together to support communities.
Essex County Council has produced a summary of their services which may be able to help you during this difficult time. See what cost of living support you could be eligible for.
You can also get in touch with Healthwatch Essex if you need information or guidance about any issue relating to your health and social care needs throughout this period.
To apply for this position please click on the application form button at the top of this page, and complete the form by the closing date of Monday 17th October 2022
Bereavement is everyone’s business shows how bereavement impacts us all. From dealing with complicated administration, to coping with financial and housing insecurity, …plus the challenges of returning to work or school after a bereavement, being bereaved throws up challenges in every area of life.
With 8 Principles for Change, and clear, detailed recommendations, the findings from Bereavement is everyone’s business are offered below in a variety of formats to ensure that everyone understands how bereavement affects their particular community, and how to support change for all bereaved people:
The findings follow one of the largest ever consultations on bereavement support undertaken in the UK, which included over 1,000 adult and 100 child respondents to the UKCB’s surveys and evidence submitted from over 130 organisations.