Activities for Disabled Children and Young People

Funding for activities for disabled children/young people in Kirklees

Community Partnerships is inviting organisations to apply for funding to deliver community based activities for disabled children/young people across Kirklees. The activities must provide positive, enjoyable activities for disabled children while giving the child’s parents/carers a break or provide positive, enjoyable activities for disabled children and their families to do together.

Who is this work aimed at?
The work is aimed at disabled children/young people across Kirklees between the ages of 8 and 19; we are particularly focussed on supporting 8-12 year olds. The child/young person could have a physical or sensory disability or a learning disability including autism and ADHD.

Outline
We are inviting community groups and others to run innovative projects that offer community based support to disabled children/young people in Kirklees. This can involve running a specific activity or making an existing mainstream activity inclusive. We are looking for term time and school holidays, weekend and evening activities.

We are initially looking for activities to take place in the school Summer Holidays between 21st July and 4th September 2016. For the first time we are also looking for projects which can continue beyond the summer holidays and run regularly throughout the year. Parents of disabled children/young people tell us that they want this continuity and that their children would benefit from regular ongoing activity. This will enable children and young people to build strong and productive relationships with community organisations running the activities, and gives scope for organisations to provide a wider range of engaging activities.

We are particularly keen to invest in projects that work in partnership with other organisations, have good links across Kirklees and avoid duplication.

We expect organisations to make a charge for the activities they provide; the grant on offer can subsidise the costs involved with running the activity, but cannot cover them all.

Outcomes
Projects must deliver the first two outcomes below and one or more of the others:

• Carers are able to balance their caring role and maintain desired quality of life
• Disabled children/young people are engaged in good quality activities
• Disabled children/young people are more confident and independent
• People are able to be carers for longer
• Individuals, families, disabled people, carers and communities are in control of their lives and are as independent and resilient as possible
• Families with a disabled family member have stable and strong relationships
• Disabled people are connected with their communities, friends and families and have the opportunity to live their life the way they want to

We are also particularly looking to invest in projects and activities that:

• Provide a short break to the parent/carer through the child/young person attending the activity;
• Enable disabled children/young people to access inclusive mainstream activities where possible
• Focus on providing group activities, not 1-2-1 support
• Encourage peer support both between children/young people and parents/carers
• Enable disabled children/young people to have the opportunity to run their own activities with support
• Develop sustainable activities

Monitoring and evaluation
Successful organisations will be expected to complete regular monitoring. This will as a minimum include providing a storyboard, completing activity monitoring, and using one or more outcome measures, depending on the amount of funding awarded. Summer holiday activities will be asked to provide an evaluation within 3 weeks of their activity ending.

Investment amount
Organisations can apply for between £250 and £25,000; if only applying for the summer holiday period the maximum available is £15,000. We are looking to invest in projects with a unit cost of less than £8 per person per hour. We expect you to demonstrate the use of volunteers, in-kind support, and be aware of options to borrow equipment and other resources from Comoodle (www.comoodle.com) and Kirklees Shares (www.kirkleesshares.org ). This funding was previously administered by Integrated Youth Support Services (IYSS) and focussed on school holiday activity for disabled children.

To apply: complete the application form attached or available online. Please make sure you read the guidance document first. Applications will be considered in 2 stages:

Stage 1 – summer holiday activities for the period 21st July to 4th September 2016. This part of the application must be submitted by 25th May 2016.

Stage 2 – year round and other school holiday activities from October 2016 to July 2017. This part of the application must be submitted by 29th July 2016. If you have already applied for Summer holiday activities, please add to the application you have already submitted and re-submit.

Deadline: See above - decisions will be made on Summer holiday activities by 17th June 2016. Decisions on year round activity will be made by 5th October.

Please Note: to apply you must be a constituted community group as a minimum and be prepared to go through the Council’s GAP (Grant Access Point) process. Safeguarding disabled children and young people is a very important aspect of delivering this work; we expect you to comply with the Council’s protocols and provide some additional policies required by the programme – see the appendix to the application.

For an electronic copy of the application form or for more details please see www.kirklees.gov.uk/communitypartnerships or contact the team on community.partnerships@kirklees.gov.uk and/or telephone number 01484 225142.

For more information visit http://www.kirklees.gov.uk/communitypartnerships