Birmingham Locality Small Grants

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The Locality Small Grants Fund totals £2.46m, with funding aimed at community organisation projects to address health inequalities experienced by communities of place within Birmingham’s localities.

Locality Small Grants is distributed in partnership with Neighbourhood Network Scheme Lead Providers and Heart of England Community Foundation. You can find more information about this fund’s availability, eligibility and application information on Heart of England’s website here. For additional advice and guidance about making an application to this fund, please contact info@heartofenglandcf.co.uk – with ‘FFF/Bham’ in your email subject title.

Available Funding

The grant amount of £15,000 will be available per annum or up to £45,000 for individual projects in a three-year period. However, there is no requirement for organisations to bid for a 3-year delivery period – applications would be welcomed irrespective of value or length of delivery period; subject to the upper limits of 3 years and £45,000.

Multi-year projects will be assessed at each end-of-year and continued funding will be dependent upon performance/meeting monitoring requirements.

Applicants are limited to apply for funding to target one distinct theme per application. Groups/Consortiums leads are invited to apply for a maximum of two small grants only.

The available funding varies by locality:

Locality	Funding
Central	£458,251
East	£595,343
North	£384,163
South	£425,740
West	£594,503

Eligibility

To receive grant funding, projects needed to be able to clearly demonstrate the following:

Innovative, new or additional services you will deliver in addressing long-standing health and wellbeing inequalities for the specific health and well-being inequality(s) your project is designed to impact
An evidence-informed rationale for how the project will show impact on fund priorities, patient behaviours, knowledge and/or clinical outcomes against identified health and well-being inequalities for one or more specific priority for the fund:

Best start in life
Healthier lives in communities
Better outcomes through earlier intervention and treatment
Empowering and connecting communities

You can find more information on eligibility here.

Projects working towards the Best Start in Life theme should select one of the following sub-priorities:

Children, particularly those in care and children living in low-income households, via activities that support the uptake of vaccinations; uptake of healthy start vouchers; reduce infant mortality and hospital admissions caused by injuries and asthma
Young adults – including reducing conception rates in those aged below 18 and interventions to improve mental health
Women – including projects encouraging breastfeeding; develop parenting skills; uptake of long-acting reversible contraceptives; uptake of antenatal screening; continuity of maternal services and reproductive health particularly for those from deprived and ethnic minority backgrounds

Projects working towards the Healthier lives in communities theme should select one of the following sub-priorities:

People living with long-term conditions and disabilities
Men, women, children, families and those from deprived and ethnic minority backgrounds – activities aimed at improving nutrition, reducing sugar and salt intake and increasing physical activity; reducing the prevalence of diabetes and cardiovascular illnesses and related admissions to hospitals
Manual workers, people with long-term mental-health conditions, and the unemployed – through smoking cessation reducing the prevalence of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease and related admissions to hospital

Projects working towards the Better outcomes through earlier intervention and treatment theme should select one of the following sub-priorities:

Ethnic minority backgrounds including African, Caribbean and South Asian Communities – through activities to increase uptake of NHS health checks particularly for hypertension, cardiovascular disease (CVD), and mental health
Deprived communities – through activities increasing immunisation uptake; uptake of cancer screening; and increasing dementia diagnosis in the under 65s
Heterosexual women – through activities preventing and treating blood borne viruses (BBV) such as HIV and Hepatitis

Projects working towards the Empowering and connecting communities theme should select one of the following sub-priorities:

LBGTQ+ and people with long-term conditions and disabilities – through activities improving mental health; reducing social isolation; supporting adults with learning disabilities into employment; increasing uptake of annual health checks; reducing suicide and self-harm rates
Migrant communities, ex-offenders, gypsy, Roma and travellers, and those with English as a second language – through activities that improve health literacy
Carers – increasing uptake of annual health checks

Applications/Outcomes

Applications opened on mid-November 2024 and will close 9th January 2025 at 17:00 (5pm), with outcomes delivered from March 2025.

Before applying for this fund, it is essential that applicants connect with their Neighbourhood Network Scheme (NNS) lead. This step is required before you can access the application portal. Once you’ve connected with your NNS lead, you can apply through the Heart of England Community Foundation website.

Neighbourhood Network Schemes (NNS)

Neighbourhood Network Schemes were set up by Adult Social Care across Birmingham in 2018 and 2019. Each constituency now has its own NNS, working closely with community organisations and local social work teams.

The main goal of NNS is to strengthen communities, making neighbourhoods better places to live. They help ensure that citizens have access to community-based support that improves well-being and quality of life. NNS does this by coordinating prevention and early intervention services and building partnerships between voluntary, community, and faith organisations, alongside public services like Adult Social Care and health.

For the Locality Small Grant Programme, NNS plays a key role in helping local community groups develop strong funding bids that meet the priorities of the Fairer Futures Fund. Before submitting a bid, organisations must connect with their NNS lead provider. Only bids that are supported by the NNS lead will be considered by the grants panel.