The Improvement Fund: cultivating improvement ideas at a local level – Gavin Russell

At Healthcare improvement Scotland we understand that it’s important to cultivate ideas for change at a local level, especially where there is clear potential to inform and influence national practice and learning.

To support this, we launched the Improvement Fund in September 2016 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. We invited applications for grants between £5000 to £75000 for funding over a 12-15 month period.

We’ve had an overwhelming amount of interest with a wide variety of ideas coming in from a range of organisations across Scotland.

We’re delighted to have awarded 7 very different projects spread across NHS boards, Health and Social Care Partnerships, housing and the third sector. 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.

To learn more about the recipients of this year’s fund, you can visit the ihub website.

We are really excited about working with the project teams to track progress throughout the funding period and evaluate the impact the interventions have had on the quality of care for people in Scotland. We’ve already begun initial project meetings with awarded projects and the onsite visits have really enhanced the experience for us as funders, giving us a valuable insight into the work we are funding. We’ll be looking to share the learning from the projects regularly throughout the duration of the funding period, so keep an eye out on our website for any updates.

As this was our launch year, going through the process for the first time has given us an opportunity for valuable learning and feedback, which we are building into the planning of the second year of the Improvement Fund.

Thank you to everyone who got in touch this year, it’s been great to see so many innovative ideas come in. We will be opening again later this year for next year’s applicants and will release more details on the next funding opportunity in due course.