Managing Money Better – Comic Relief’s New Older People's Programme
Comic Relief has a long standing commitment to working with older people. Our focus has been on ensuring the needs of older people are met, their rights upheld and their skills and experience used and valued.
We know that currently one in five older people are living below the poverty line and many lack access to good, independent financial advice. Many don’t know what benefits they are entitled to as they struggle to get through the complex claims process. In these testing times, and with the rising cost of living and soaring energy prices, older people are being adversely affected.
Aim of the programme
The programme will help older people cope with the challenges of this particularly harsh financial climate and the resultant exclusion and hardship it is causing. It will be aimed at supporting older people (65+) to build their knowledge and skills to manage their money more effectively, ensure access to good, independent financial advice, guard against financial scams and abuse and cope better with cold homes. We are especially interested in how older people can be supported to manage the extreme rising fuel and food prices. We will give priority to projects that are being developed in partnership with voluntary sector organisations and banks, building societies, credit unions, energy companies and others to recognise and respond better to the needs of older people and to ensure continuity at the end of the project period. Partner organisations that are simply providing referrals to each other will not be considered as strategic partners for the purpose of this programme.
Outcomes
The work will need to deliver one or more of the following outcomes for older people to:
- Manage their money more effectively
- Increase their income
- Experience less fuel poverty
- Deal better with financial distress (such as abuse, scams and so on)
Other important information
We know that the size and scale of the financial difficulties facing older people is enormous. Our guidelines are broad to enable different approaches, but it inevitably means we will receive many more applications than we can fund. So, in addition to meeting one or more of the outcomes listed above, we will only fund applications where:
- Older people have been involved in the design of the proposal and will be supporting their peers who are less active
- there are strategic partnership approaches already in place with voluntary, private and public organisations and local people of all ages at the time of application
- new approaches are being tested and disseminated
- the most isolated older people and those who are traditionally hard to reach or live in the poorest and most deprived areas are being targeted
Projects that do not meet the criteria specified above will not be considered
There is no overall maximum grant and we expect to make awards of varying sizes. This programme will not make grants under £10,000.
The second cycle for this programme will open on 10 April 2012. This is a two-stage application process and the first stage application forms will be available on our website from 10 April onwards. Applicants will have until 08 June 2012 at midday to submit these. If your application is chosen for further consideration, you will be invited to submit a full proposal which will have to be completed by 03 August 2012 at midday.
If you would like to talk to us about whether your work meets our criteria, please email us at: ukgrants@comicrelief.com or call us on 020 7820 2000 and ask to speak to a member of staff from the Older People’s programme.