Department of Health and Social Care
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Ivan Lewis announces social enterprise fund open for business
New social enterprise innovation scheme will improve local services
Care Services Minister, Ivan Lewis announced the opening of the second round of the Department of Health (DH) Social Enterprise Investment Fund today. He also announced that this year, it would include a new element, the 'Innovation for Life Challenge Fund', developed in collaboration with the Social Enterprise Coalition. The Innovation for Life Challenge Fund will encourage Strategic Health Authorities (SHAs) and their partners to find collaborative solutions to health and social care needs through social enterprise
Speaking at The Office of the Third Sector (OTS) Good Deals conference, the Minister announced that SHAs would be invited to bid for up to £100k revenue each (from the existing Social Enterprise Fund) to support the commissioning of innovative cross-sector social enterprise solutions. Funding from the new 'Innovation for life Challenge Fund' for 2008/9 could be used to support local boroughs to develop social enterprise solutions to health and well-being issues and to provide cross-sector solutions to local problems, for instance the health and housing sectors working together.
Care Services Minister Ivan Lewis said:
"The Innovation for Life Challenge Fund is testimony to our confidence in social enterprise as part of the solution to commissioning world class health and social care services.
"We hope that this will challenge commissioners to find solutions through social enterprises to longstanding problems that have the potential to lead to real social change and improvement in health and well being.
"Increasingly, we are seeing social enterprises delivering the innovative and personalised services that people rightly expect. That is why we have set up this new scheme as part of the £100 million Social Enterprise Investment Fund."
Local partners, under the stewardship of the SHAs would be expected to provide further funding equivalent to 25 per cent of their bid to the Innovation for Life Challenge Fund.
Round two of the SEIF is now open to bidders with £11m capital and £6m revenue funding available to support successful applicants. The Social Enterprise Investment Fund supports the development of social enterprises in health and social care such as women's refuges, migraine clinics and exercise programmes for the elderly, which take account of and address the needs of a wide range of patients and services users, particularly the most vulnerable and excluded.
Social enterprises are businesses, which reinvest their profits back into the organisation or into the local community, promoting independence, well-being and social inclusion and helping to improve people's quality of life.
Notes for Editors
1. The Social Enterprise Investment Fund is intended to stimulate and encourage the development of a vibrant social enterprise sector in the delivery of health and social care services. It aims to provide start-up funding and longer-term investment to emerging and existing social enterprises in the health and social care sector with a view to their sustainability. The Fund offers loans, grants and equity investments (or a mixture of these).
2. Social enterprises are dynamic businesses with social and environmental aims. Well known examples include The Big Issue, Cafe Direct and Jamie Oliver's Fifteen, but there are many other social enterprises operating in a wide range of industries.
3. More information about the Department of Health's social enterprise programme can be found at: http://www.dh.gov.uk/en/Managingyourorganisation/Commissioning/Socialenterprise/index.htm
4. The Social Enterprise Coalition is the UK's national body for social enterprise. Acting as the voice for the sector, it supports and represents the work of its members, influences national policy and promotes best practice. http://www.socialenterprise.org.uk
