Enabling Independence and Choice

Helps older people, people with mental health problems, people with learning disabilities, and carers.

Everyone has a right to lead a rich and fulfilling life and to have choices about how they live. With the right support, advice and information, vulnerable people can live more independently, participate more fully in society and move forward with their lives. This programme is designed to improve the amount, range and quality of services for people that, we think, receive least support from other sources. They are:

  • older people;
  • people with mental health problems;
  • people with learning disabilities;
  • carers.

In the programme as a whole, we want to help organisations that deliver support over and above what statutory authorities provide. This means that we will not fund services that should be the responsibility of statutory organisations or those which were previously funded by local authorities or the NHS. However, we recognise that the state does not meet the comprehensive range of vulnerable people’s needs and that the quality and choice of services is patchy. In this programme we want to address these gaps in provision.

You will need to have some track record of work in the relevant field. You will be able to show us that you will run high-quality services that meet the widest range of people’s needs and help people to move forward with their lives. We will seek to link organisations together to share good practice. Innovation is not a requirement, but we are happy to consider proposals that the statutory sector would find too difficult or risky to fund, or which take a new approach to providing services where it is sensible to do so.

In this programme we are also especially concerned to see that the people who use your services are involved in their development and delivery.