About the Fund
Since its inception in 2004 the Parenting Fund has disbursed over £30 million in grants to 265 organisations, the Fund has enabled projects to reach over 170,000 parents with direct parenting assistance. It has also helped them provide information on many challenging subjects such as coping with bereavement and managing children's behaviour to over a million parents. In addition projects have been able to offer advice or information to over 60,000 practitioners. From April 2009 to March 2011 Parenting Fund Round 3 will be funding 90 projects in 23 priority areas and these projects will be assisted by a programme of consultancy support to develop their capacity to bid to deliver services.
Current Funding
In October 2008 the government announced that a third round of the Parenting Fund, worth £12 million in grants, would be available to support parenting services for the period April 2009 to March 2011 in 23 priority local authorities in England. Applications for grants were sought from third sector organisations that met the criteria and by the closing date of December 12th 2008, 480 applications had been received with a total value of over £90 million. An Independent Grants Advisory Panel considered a shortlist of 180 projects and made recommendations to the Minister of State for Children, Young People and Families. On the 19th March 2009 it was announced that 90 projects would be awarded a Parenting Fund Round 3 Grant. For the press release please go to www.familyandparenting.org/item/2161
Who's receiving funding
The 90 projects awarded a grant are a rich and diverse mix of large and small organizations, they will provide an incredible range of different and innovative services for parents, reaching families whom the mainstream services find difficult to engage and offering support to parents enduring hardship and a range of difficult circumstances.
Links with Local Authorities
The Parenting Fund grant projects are, of course, part of a range of services provided within local authority areas and it was important that when the projects applied for the grant that they had the support of the local authority Parenting Commissioners and that the service fitted well with the local Parenting Strategy. This relationship between the Parenting Fund and the local Parenting Commissioners will be further developed during the grant period.
Beyond the Parenting Fund - Sustainability, how can we help?
A key aim of the Parenting Fund Round 3 is for the 90 funded projects to develop their service so as to become sustainable by the end of the 2 year funding period. To help in achieving this aim the Family and Parenting Institute, as Fundholder manager, in partnership with Pricewaterhouse Coopers will provide the projects an extensive integrated support package of consultancy and focused workshops, tailored to their specific development needs.
Information sharing
It is also vitally important that the learning from Parenting Fund is shared more widely throughout the Third Sector and elsewhere. The Parenting Fund website has been completely refreshed so that it can send out information, emerging research and knowledge widely. We will be gathering and disseminating learning from the projects and localities, to inform policy and practice and we will be carrying out short pieces of action and thematic research throughout the lifetime of the grant, unlike previous Rounds where the learning has been gathered into a final report.
During the course of the first year of the Parenting Fund Round 3 it is planned that a number of key themes of strategic significance will be developed in collaboration with the DCSF and the parenting sector. Opportunities to deliver these themed pieces of work will be offered to strategic third sector organizations through a sub-contracting process, taking on some of the work already started in the Transition phase which is just concluding.
Other Funding Opportunities
Please see the Family and Parenting Institute's useful links to support organisations fundraising, click here to go to this page
Or have a look at these websites:
Please click for information on previous funding rounds