Britain is facing its biggest cost of living crisis in decades. At Citizens Advice, we’ve seen more people coming to us for help with crisis support, energy problems and not having enough money to make ends meet than ever before. In this dashboard Citizens Advice share insights from across our service on how the crisis is affecting the people they help.
Citizens Advice have been updating this dashboard every month tracking how the cost of living crisis is changing. If there are insights you’d like to hear from them, please get in contact at coldatadashboard@citizensadvice.org.uk.
This programme is open for applications from Monday 22nd May 2023 until 4pm on Friday 7th July. No applications will be eligible if received after this.
Please note – you cannot apply to us if you are currently a grant holder and your grant is not due to end until 2024.
Eligibility for our UK Programmes
We do not fund individuals, only organisations. To be eligible to make an application your organisation must be based in the UK and be one of the following:
Registered Charity
Charitable Incorporated Organisation (CIO)
Community Interest Company (CIC) (NB must be limited by guarantee, not by shares)
Charitable Company (NB you must be registered both as a charity and a company)
To be eligible to apply, your total annual income as shown in your most recent accounts should be no more than £250,000.
If your income is above that in your latest accounts but your average income over the most recent three years is under £250k then you can still apply – this is to allow for one-off “good” years.
We are keen to support small organisations and our preference is to fund those already established rather than new ones (though these are still eligible).
Individuals (including via bursaries)
Non-charitable activities
Promotion of Religion
Party-political organisations or Party-political campaigning (charitable campaigning is okay)
Medical research
Registered Social Landlords (eg housing associations)
Hospitals or primary healthcare provision
Fundraising-only posts (though we can fund a post where fundraising is part of what they do)
Statutory services
Residential care
This list is not meant to be exhaustive. If you have an activity/proposal where you are not sure if we would fund it, please get in touch and we can discuss it.
We Do Not Fund
Supporting Good Governance and Good Practice
Whilst you may be eligible to apply and your proposal meets our criteria, priority will be given to organisations which demonstrate good governance and good practice. For example:
having a history of returning accounts and documents to your regulatory body (eg Charity Commission) on time
having at least four Trustees/Directors on your Board and where all trustees/directors are unrelated to each other and to the CEO or Executive Director.
having robust policies and practices on safeguarding, equalities, financial management, etc
We will also prioritise organisations which have a significant number of people on their boards and/or staff team who have lived experience of the issues they are addressing.
Where a grant would be used to support the provision of specialist and/or sensitive services you must demonstrate sufficient track record and expertise in delivering those services. In some cases a recognised qualification or quality mark may be required.
We hope this information is clear – however if you are not sure about anything please get in touch.
Types of Grants Awarded
The Fund has signed up to the IVAR Eight Commitments ( https://www.ivar.org.uk/flexible-funders/ ) – a pledge by funders to provide clear information and reduce bureaucracy for applicants. As part of that pledge we aim to provide funding which meets your needs as far and as appropriately as possible.
We offer Unrestricted Grants; or Project/Core Funding.
You can choose which of these to apply for, however please note that to be eligible for unrestricted funding all the work of your organisation must meet our criteria. For example, if you were a general community group where only some of the work you did was with refugees then you could not apply for unrestricted funding as your other work would not meet our priorities. All unrestricted grants must be used for charitable purposes.
Organisations can apply for up to two years’ funding with grants awarded usually between £5,000 – £7,000 in value per year.
If you already hold a grant from us you can apply in this round provided that your current grant ends in 2023 – if it does not end until 2024 then I’m afraid you are unable to apply.
If you applied before and were unsuccessful you can still apply in this round.
Your people can be your biggest asset and with security awareness training they can become highly effective barriers to cyber-crime. Security awareness training provides simple and effective knowledge for people to understand their environment and provides the confidence to challenge when something does not look right. The training is focussed on those with little or no cyber security or technical knowledge and is delivered in small, succinct modules using real world examples.
The sessions will cover the following:
Introduction to Cyber Resilience
Why it is important
Different types of security vulnerabilities out there (technical/non-technical)
Social Engineering
Strong passwords and their importance
Ishings (Spear Phishing, Vishing, Email Phishing and Smishing)
Social media and what you put out there
Keeping devices up to date
Local Grown Attacks and their Impact
Ransomware
This training is delivered by the Eastern Cyber Resilience Centre. The trainers are highly knowledgeable, personable, and friendly and pride themselves on providing the right environment to feel comfortable and to ask questions.
NEA’s free Fuel Poverty Forums are aimed at frontline service providers, to examine practical and policy initiatives related to fuel poverty and delivering energy efficiency solutions at a local, regional and national level. The regional Forums showcase innovation, good practice and promote dialogue and discussion on a wide range of sectoral issues to help NEA shape policy developments and campaigns.
The summer forums will be taking place in person in June and July. Attendance is free, however numbers are limited and NEA members will be given priority booking.
To register, click the link below to be taken to the booking form. Registered participants will receive an agenda and joining instructions nearer to the time.
Cost to participants: Free (However, if a delegate fails to attend a course that they have booked, or cancel with less than five working days’ notice, their organisation will be charged)
Target audience: anyone working with children and families in Essex
Learning Outcomes:
What Criminal Exploitation is
The signs of Criminal Exploitation in children & young people and how it progresses
Practical guidance for communication with children & young people you suspect of being involved in criminal exploitation
What services there are available to support children, young people and families who have been subjected to Criminal Exploitation
Time for questions and sharing concerns/ advice
Cancellation
If a delegate fails to attend a course that they have booked, or cancel with less than five working days’ notice, their organisation will be charged – £20. A delegate will be deemed a non-attendee if they arrive 15 minutes after the course commences either online or at a venue.
N.B. This is a virtual training course and delegates will be sent a calendar invite with the link to Microsoft Teams to join the event. Please note that your email address may be visible to other delegates on the Microsoft Teams invite.
If the booking for the course has closed, please e-mail escb.training@essex.gov.uk to see if there are any places available. Only those delegates who are on the ESCB attendance list will be admitted to the training.
NB: There is no charge to delegates for these workshops although there will be a charge for non-attendance and late notice cancellation.
We’re less than a week away from our next cost-of-living data briefing. You can register now for the event. We’ll be joined by Emma Revie, Chief Executive at The Trussell Trust and Dr Sarah Hughes, Chief Executive at Mind alongside Dame Claire Moriarty, Chief Executive at Citizens Advice. They’ll discuss how the crisis is escalating and what support is needed to help people overcome what often becomes a downward spiral of debt and anxiety. Our data will be presented by Tom MacInnes, our Chief Data Analyst.
In our May briefing we heard Veronica’s story. When her fixed-rate mortgage came to an end, like many others, higher interest rates meant that her monthly mortgage payments shot up. It’s put extra pressure on her monthly budget, and with her other essential spending she doesn’t have enough each month to make ends meet.
Maldon and District Community Voluntary Service are hosting a funding fair for voluntary and community groups working in the Maldon District. The event will include presentations from both national and local funders who will outline how to apply to them for funds and how they make grants. There will also be an opportunity to network with them and other local groups and to speak to Maldon and District CVS about their funding advice service. The Funding Fair will be held on Tuesday 4th July from 1pm-3:30pm at Maldon Town Hall.
Autism Anglia’s independent diagnostic service is an expert provider of NICE compliant autism diagnostic assessments for anyone over 3 years old. Their Multi-disciplinary team are qualified and experienced with a fantastic understanding of different profiles of autism, offering individualised recommendations and education advice.
Autism Anglia pride themselves on their personalised approach for their gold-standard service, providing a named person to guide through the process which starts with analysing results from comprehensive screening questionnaires. Assessments are carried out using ADOS-2 and ADI-R diagnostic tools alongside expert clinical opinion, as well as a review of historical, professional, and school reports where applicable. Autism Anglia offer pre and post-diagnostic support including a detailed report.