- Area:
- North West England
- Programme:
- Multiple and Complex Needs
- Release date:
- 26 3 2013
The BIG Lottery Fund (BIG) announced today that partnerships in Liverpool and Blackpool are now on their way to receiving up to £10 million each to support people with multiple problems like homelessness, mental ill health, addiction and reoffending.
BIG is awarding £50,000 each to the partnerships – one in Liverpool, led by Plus Dane Group, the other in Blackpool led by Addaction. The £50,000 grants will help them submit business plans on how they will improve and better coordinate services to tackle the needs of people living chaotic lives in order to receive up to £10m each. Eight other successful partnerships across England are also on the verge of receiving a share of the £100m investment.
With problem drug users alone costing government and society around £46,000 a year, BIG’s £100m investment which aims to help thousands of people, could save the public purse hundreds of millions of pounds.
BIG’s investment, backed by Jon Snow, Mitch Winehouse and Russell Brand, has brought together organisations and bodies that tackle these issues to improve the stability, confidence and capability of people with multiple and complex needs to lead better lives so they spend less time in prison, reduce their drug abuse, are in stable accommodation and have better mental health.
The Liverpool partnership will place service users at the heart of the project and will provide the opportunity for them to design, deliver and evaluate activities as well as offer support via a peer mentoring scheme. It will help people with mental wellbeing through arts and sports programmes in the city. Project learning will be used to inform and influence strategic planning and delivery at a local and national level and develop better ways of working.
Andy Lomas, Neighbourhood Director at Plus Dane Group, said: “This is fantastic news for Liverpool. The potential investment by the Big Lottery Fund will help to transform services for people with multiple and complex needs across the city. Our aim is to provide new, flexible services that will improve the lives of those with the most entrenched needs. Through delivering better connected services there will be benefits for the whole city through reduced pressure on acute services. All members of the partnership are working closely together which means that we are very confident we can enable people to overcome their severe and multiple problems, achieve their potential and make a positive contribution to the community.”
Some areas of Blackpool have more than double the national average for admission for mental health problems, there are high levels of anti-social behaviour, often alcohol-related, and high levels of use of heroin and crack cocaine. The work of the South Beach Transience Pilot suggests that a minimum of 1,000 people with multiple and complex needs live in Blackpool (an extrapolation calculated by Blackpool Council based on the identification of 200 people with multiple complex needs from 815 properties visited in South Beach).The partnership will work with those people who have the most severe and complex needs because these people place the heaviest burden on health and care services and are the hardest to engage and retain in services.
By the end of the project, people with multiple and complex needs will be healthier and happier, engaged in services at an earlier stage, receive better coordinated support with all agencies taking responsibility for their care and have access to effective recovery support and improved reintegration. Individuals will be able to navigate through health, care and criminal justice systems more easily.
Alan Hopley, Director of Fundraising, Marketing and Communications, at Addaction, said: “There are many people in Blackpool that have a whole range of different needs. Many of them don’t receive the help they need as their problems are so complex. This blights their lives which can also impact on the community they live in. This is a fantastic opportunity to work collectively across all organisations on more comprehensive solutions to tackle the ingrained problems that these people face.”
Alison Rowe, Big Lottery Fund England Head of Communications, said: “There are countless statistics demonstrating a need to help people with multiple and complex needs – for example the NHS Confederation found that 70 per cent of prisoners suffer from a mental illness and a substance abuse problem.
“Imagine a world where service delivery gives individuals the power to turn their lives around – our ultimate goal is to use the learning gleaned from this investment to shift policy thinking so that individuals become assets rather than just a drain on society.’
Jon Snow, Channel 4 News Presenter and Chair of the New Horizon Youth Centre, said: “I have worked for some four decades in a project that works with vulnerable and homeless young people and I have rarely ever come across funding targeted directly at supporting people of any age with multiple and complex needs.
“That’s why I am so excited by the Big Lottery Fund’s radically new approach to put £100 million behind bringing the assorted services together behind this needy but difficult group of people.
“I believe this initiative is going to make life changing differences to the lives of very many people previously regarded as on the margins of society. I’m particularly attracted to the way the Big Lottery Fund has engaged the client groups themselves in designing services.
“In austere and difficult times, the Big Lottery Fund is laying the foundations toward making a profound difference. I’m honoured to support their endeavour.”
Mitch Winehouse, who alongside family members established The Amy Winehouse Foundation, said: “Since losing Amy I have been supporting charities that help people who are struggling with an addiction or health issue. I’ve been involved with Big Lottery Fund since the start of this investment and I’m very excited that successful partnerships are now on the verge of receiving up to £10 million to start helping people with serious and complex problems. This money will bring different organisations together to offer people more tailored support to deal with all the different needs that they may have.”
Russell Brand said: "The BIG Lottery Fund is investing 100m in people with complex needs - this means alcoholics, homeless folk, mentally ill people and drug addicts. They will be devising a strategy in collaboration with the beneficiaries - this is a unique and outstanding initiative that will significantly advance our society. The BIG Lottery Fund has a simple solution to complex needs - now I might buy a bloody ticket!"
Over the eight-year investment, BIG will track the success of the partnerships and gather evidence that will shed light on more effective and efficient ways of organising and delivering services including tracking the savings and benefits to the wider community as well as to the individuals who are supported. BIG will use this learning to improve practice amongst the projects it funds, to influence future policy and practice and encourage the continuation of successful interventions.
Blackpool case study:
Dominic Ruffy, from Lytham St Annes, came from a loving family but rebelled and ended up spending 22 years misusing drugs but now works for the Any Winehouse Foundation.
“When I was 13 I discovered alcohol and then drugs. I was expelled from school at 16. By the time I was approaching 30 I had progressed on to crack and heroin and by the time I hit 32 I was too dysfunctional to hold down a stable job.
“I had lost my home, had a drugs related criminal record, was estranged from my daughter and I was putting my immediate family through hell, on a daily basis.
“At this point in time I found my way into the merry-go-round of addiction services. All my best efforts had failed me. I did not find hope in the services I visited. What I found were prescription substitutes and ‘treatment’ solutions offered by professionals who had no direct experience of my problems themselves. Different services all offered basically the same solutions….solutions that time after time did not and would never have worked for me. Why didn’t these services talk to each other? Why did I need to repeat myself to multiple agencies?
“In the end my family stepped in and sent me away to rehab where I was met by people in recovery. I was given hope and I was given help.
“All the services I needed to access were in the same building…a bed to sleep in, a stable diet to rebuild me physically, counsellors who had walked the same path I had walked.”
Dominic left there in October 2011 and within six months had found a job, working for the Amy Winehouse Foundation.
He said: “This investment from BIG is incredible; it will change the lives of thousands of people, and their families, across England.”
Liverpool partnership members:
Plus Dane Housing, Liverpool City Council, Liverpool PCT, NHS Mental Health Commissioning, Merseyside Probation Service, Liverpool Shadow Clinical, Commissioning Group Board, Liverpool Council for Voluntary Sector Services, Addaction, Imagine, Liverpool YMCA, Shelter, Whitechapel Centre.
Blackpool partnership members:
Addaction, Lancashire Care Foundation Trust, Renaissance at Drugline, Blackpool Borough Council, Blackpool Coastal Housing, Homeless Forum, Lancahsire Constabulary, Lancashire Probation Trust, NACRO, NHS Blackpool, Blackpool Advocacy, Richmond Fellowship, North West Ambulance Service.
Big Lottery Fund Press Office: 020 7211 1888
Out of hours media contact: 07867 500 572
Full details of the Big Lottery Fund programmes and grant awards are available on the website: www.biglotteryfund.org.uk
Ask BIG a question here: https://ask.biglotteryfund.org.uk
Follow BIG on Twitter: www.twitter.com/BigLotteryFund #BIGlf
Find BIG on facebook: www.facebook.com/BigLotteryFund
Notes to Editors
There are an estimated 60,000 adults in England with multiple needs who are beset by several problems at once and lack effective contact with services that support across all their needs. - Making Every Adult Matter (2009).
An estimate of direct annual expenditure on an ‘average’ adult with multiple needs in 2006 was around £23,000. David Halpern, Social exclusion: bringing opportunity for all,
Presentation at Chequers, 29th August, 2006.
Home Office research has suggested a problem drug user costs the government £10,400 a year in reactive expenditure and in social costs around £35,450.
Department of Health figures suggest it is four times more expensive for hospitals to care for homeless people.
St Mungos homeless service found 69% of their hostel clients who were former rough sleepers had some form of mental health problem.
• The Big Lottery Fund (BIG), the largest distributor of National Lottery good cause funding, is responsible for giving out 40% of the money raised for good causes by the National Lottery.
• BIG is committed to bringing real improvements to communities and the lives of people most in need and has been rolling out grants to health, education, environment and charitable causes across the UK. Since June 2004 BIG has awarded over £6bn.
• The Fund was formally established by Parliament on 1 December 2006.
• Since the National Lottery began in 1994, 28p from every pound spent by the public has gone to good causes. As a result, over £29 billion has now been raised and more than 383,000 grants awarded across arts, sport, heritage, charities, health, education and the environment.
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