Hackney Council continues to invest in the voluntary and community sector through a grants programme, with £2.5m allocated in 2015/16. This programme funds a range of projects for residents, such as youth activity schemes, health advice, employment support advice and improving safety in the borough.
The Healthier Hackney Fund is another community grants programme launched by the Public Health team in Hackney Council in 2014. The fund supports local community and voluntary organisations to run innovative projects to tackle some of the most engrained health issues in the borough. In the first year of the fund, one of the priority health issues covered by the grants was mental health, which included the impact of social isolation on mental wellbeing. An organisation named Duckie was funded to deliver a project focusing specifically on reducing social isolation in older people (see Box 5). One of the priority issues for the 2016/17 Healthier Hackney Fund is community resilience. Projects funded under this grants theme will be reporting on progress and outcomes in summer 2017.
Box 5: Case study – Duckie (Healthier Hackney Fund project)
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