Health and social care organisations and higher education facilities across Scotland have been awarded grants ranging from £4,500 to £72,500 to support initiatives to improve the care provided in health and social care. The range of projects include:

• support for introducing money advice services within GP practices in deprived communities,
• art-based projects to support people with profound learning difficulties,
• immediate access to preventative healthcare for the homeless, and
• technology-based solutions to provide multiple sclerosis patients with direct services to their home.
• The grants are being made available by Healthcare Improvement Scotland via its Improvement Fund, and the grant winners were chosen after a stringent application process.

The largest single grant award of £72,580 was made to ARK Housing Association working in partnership with Edinburgh Health and Social Care Partnership, NHS Lothian and the Good Life Group. The project will support people with complex care needs to leave hospital and live in a supported community setting.

Healthcare Improvement Scotland’s Chief Executive Robbie Pearson said:

“We launched the improvement fund to give health and social care organisations the opportunity to apply for funding to allow them to design and test new solutions to help to address health and social care issues at a local level.

“The number of enquiries and the quality of applications received in response to this first set of improvement fund awards has been extremely encouraging. We look forward to working with recipients over the coming year to share and learn from their experiences.”

Ruth Glassborow, Director of Improvement Support for Healthcare improvement Scotland, said:

“We are very excited to be able to award these grants to support improvement at a local level. The improvement fund will allow recipients to design and test new solutions that will lead to measurable improvements in health and social care services, and encourage shared learning and practice with organisations across Scotland. The number and quality of applications demonstrate the commitment that organisations across Scotland have to improving care across both health and social care.”

To learn more about the Improvement Fund, visit: http://ihub.scot/a-z-programmes/improvement-fund/.

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