£12 Million Care and Wellbeing Fund To Invest In Community Care

The Care and Wellbeing Fund announces today that it has launched with £12 million of investment from Big Society Capital and Macmillan Cancer Support. The fund will be used to develop and scale new and existing community care services for people affected by cancer and other long term conditions. Its first investment will tackle loneliness and social isolation in Worcestershire.

The need for health and care services in the community is expected to increase significantly over the next 10 years.  The number of over 65s will rise from approximately 10 million people in 2010 to 16 million people in 2030, with over half of people over 70 living with long term health conditions. There are currently 2.5 million people living with cancer today. Alongside this, spending for health and care services has been severely reduced, with many services curtailed and an estimated £30billion funding gap emerging by the end of the decade.

As the need for funding increases and government budgets become increasingly stretched, it is essential to develop new and innovative approaches to meet future challenges. Although there is support for integrating acute and community care, organisations presently lack investment to bring services to development or scale in the community. The Care and Wellbeing Fund will encourage commissioners and voluntary organisations to focus on delivering better outcomes in health and social care, and will provide the financial support and advice needed to make these a reality.

Allan Cowie, Director of Service Excellence and Support at Macmillan Cancer Support, said: “We believe investing in the Care and Wellbeing Fund can help create the kind of quality and personalised services that people affected by cancer so desperately need. Through our investment and expertise we will help drive innovation, seek to grow community based provision and as a consequence enable new sustainable services to be delivered that people can access when and where they need them. This will not only help us meet the growing and complex needs of people affected by cancer, but those with other long term conditions as well.”

The 10 year fund will look to invest in community based provision, integrated health and social care services, and prevention and wellbeing approaches. It seeks to drive greater social impact by improving the health and care outcomes for vulnerable groups, increasing the quality and access to services and developing financially robust models for charities and social enterprises. The majority of investments will be made into service redesign projects, developed alongside health commissioners.

“The Care and Wellbeing Fund marks an important step forward for social investment, bringing together the expertise of leading charities to unlock significant resources to help tackle the growing challenges we face in supporting an ageing population. We hope that this fund will help to catalyse innovation and enable more great projects to reach more people,” said Nick O’Donohoe, Chief Executive of Big Society Capital.

The fund will be managed by Social Finance, a leading not for profit, social investment intermediary. The Health Foundation, an independent charity committed to bringing about better health and health care for people in the UK, is providing development funding to build the pipeline of investment opportunities.  Investment decisions will be approved by an independent investment committee with NHS, local authority and financial expertise.

“Social Finance is delighted to be managing the Care and Wellbeing Fund. We will draw on the significant investment, analytical and healthcare expertise of the Social Finance team. We believe that socially-focused capital can unlock innovation and deliver real impact in the health and social care sector,” says Clodagh Warde, Care and Wellbeing Fund Director.