The Princess Royal Trust For Carers

The Princess Royal Trust for Carers

Young Carers Grants Programmes funded by

2007- 2008

Guidelines for Applicants

registered charity 326568

Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………………1 Context……………………………………………………………………………………………………1 Regional and on-line training initiative for applicants………………………………………………. 2 Application process……………………………………………………………………………………..2 Who can apply? ...... 3 Which group of young carers should applicants aim to work with? ...... 3 What kind of work will you prioritise? ...... 4 Evidence of need for your proposal………………………………………………………………….. 4 Programme aims identified for all applicants to plan towards…………………………………….. 5 What will your application be assessed on? ...... 6 Are there any additional conditions attached to the funding? ...... 6 Completing the project planning table? ...... 6 Additional resources for project planning……………………………………………………………. 7 What kinds of work we will fund? ...... 7 What kinds of work we will not fund? ...... 7 Monitoring and evaluation…………………………………………………………………………….. 8 How do we apply? ...... 8 What do we need to send with our application? ...... 9 Other useful funding information………………………………………………………………………10

Introduction The Princess Royal Trust for Carers has been contracted for a second time by Comic Relief, to distribute grants to voluntary sector services for young carers, under the age of 21, in 2008. This new stream of funding will continue to provide funding for projects that are providing services or activities for young carers. However, the new funding will be more tightly focused on delivering work against specific programme aims related to positive change for young carers. The funding programme will also offer all those interested in the funding the opportunity to attend regional and on-line based training. This training will focus on transferable project planning skills which will cover establishing need, defining and measuring outcomes and learning from work. The maximum grant available over three years is £70,000.

Context Young carers are children and young people who have a caring responsibility for a sick or disabled family member. They take on caring responsibilities that are inappropriate to their age, such as personal care for a disabled adult or emotional care for a parent with a mental health problem. In addition, they are often responsible for younger siblings and all the household chores. For some young carers this means missing school, physical ill health and stress or sleepless nights. To find out more about young carers, visit YC Net: www.youngcarers.net/professionals

We believe that no child should have to take on caring roles that are more appropriate for an adult. Sadly, this situation is the reality for many children and we hope that this continued partnership will help many young people to be children as well as carers.

Application process The Young Carers Grant Programme has a two-stage application process.

Stage one – submit an expression of interest All interested third sector organisations / partnerships are invited to complete a short expression of interest form which will be assessed by a panel of colleagues from the Trust, Comic Relief and other expert voluntary/statutory sector organisations. The panel will identify up to 20 projects which will meet the programme aims of the Young Carers Grant Programme. The forms will be available to download at www.carers.org or can be sent to you by the Grants team. The form aims to allow applicants to demonstrate:  That the proposed project is based on sound evidence of need  That the applicant has considered carefully how the proposed work will meet the programme aims  That the applicant is committed to sharing learning about what works, and what does not, with other organisations

Stage one opens 11 October 2007 and closes 14 December 2007. Applicants will be notified of the assessment outcome by mid January 2008.

Stage two – up to 20 shortlisted projects will submit a full application The second stage application forms will be sent to shortlisted projects with further guidance. We expect to offer up to 12 grants. Applicants will have the opportunity to send an initial draft of their proposed project plan to the Grants team and then to discuss their proposed outcomes and learning with the team, in time to send their final application before the deadline. We will encourage shortlisted applicants in establishing long term partnerships with local funders. All applications received by the deadline will be assessed and a report written for consideration by a panel of colleagues from the Trust, Comic Relief and other expert voluntary/statutory sector organisations. Young people will also be involved in the selection process and will contribute to the final decisions on funding.

The final deadline for applications from shortlisted projects will be 5pm, Friday 22nd February 2008, with grants awarded by mid April 2008.

Who can apply? The grants programme is open to all registered charities and registered charitable companies. We can only make grants to organisations that have at least three people on their management committee (these must not be members of the same family). Please be aware that we are unlikely to make grants to organisations with free reserves that are more than one year’s running costs.

If you do not have a constitution or similar document, you may wish to contact your local Council for Voluntary Service for assistance with adopting a constitution. A list of all CVS's can be found on the website of the National Association of CVS's: www.nacvs.org.uk .

You do not have to be part of The Princess Royal Trust for Carers’ network of Carers Centres. We will treat all applications equally. To help ensure that the selection process is fair to all, we have young people and representatives of other organisations on our selection panels and external evaluation of the programme.

We welcome applications to develop high quality support to young carers which includes projects working in partnership with other voluntary, statutory agencies or private sector, such as work in partnership with schools. We cannot make grants payable to individuals.

Which groups of young carers should applicants aim to work with? The Young Carers Grant programme will continue to prioritise providing direct support to young carers who are hard to reach or from under-represented communities, such as ethnic minority or refugee communities. Hard to reach young carers could include groups that are hidden due to the stigma attached to the condition of the person they are caring for or who find it difficult to engage with services. The grant programme will also prioritise supporting young carers who have the heaviest emotional or physical caring responsibilities, or who are most affected by their caring responsibilities. Your application should include clear information about the evidence of need. Many young people are affected by disability or illness in the family, but only a small proportion take on caring roles that significantly affect their lives. While this programme will focus on direct support to young carers themselves, this programme will promote the ethos that young carers work should strengthen families. We also want to make sure that our funding is spread around the UK and reaches a diverse mixture of communities.

What kind of work will you prioritise? The Young Carers Grant programme aims to fund work that is outcome focused and from which other organisations can learn (see the notes on Aim 3 below). You should show us that you have a clear idea of the need you are trying to meet, and how you will know if you have met that need. The young carers you support should be involved in identifying their needs and planning support or activities.

We are keen to promote outcome focused support, which means funding work with outcomes based on clearly evidenced need, and that is set up to measure the outcomes that have occurred as a result of this grant funding. In order to further this agenda, we have used the existing research and practice evidence base to identify three aims which all applicants must base their projects on. They are broad aims and we are leaving it entirely up to applicants to identify objectives that will meet these aims for their target group.

In order to help you measure the success of your project at meeting the aims, all applicants must agree to use the specially commissioned Young Carers Grant programme outcome measuring tool, to measure the impacts and outcomes for the young carers you intend to support. The measuring tool and guidance are being prepared by Professor Saul Becker and his colleagues at the University of Nottingham. Professor Becker is the acknowledged leader in the field of young carers research. The tool will be based on academic research and it is intended that as part of the funded work, project workers can use this with the young carers they support to establish a baseline, and then again after an intervention, to measure the difference the intervention has made. They will cover the amount of inappropriate caring the young carer is taking on, their health and well being and their attendance at school. The final measuring tool will be available to shortlisted projects by early 2008. We are happy for you to continue to use any existing outcome measuring tools alongside the ones commissioned for the

programme – this will provide interesting comparative data on the use of different outcome measuring approaches.

We use the application process to ensure that we fund organisations that are well managed. We advise you to ensure that information on your application is complete, legible and clear. If you are unsure as to the level of detail required, please get in touch (contact details below). We are always happy for you to get in touch with our grants team and asking for advice will not prejudice your application.

Evidence of Need for your Proposal

The expression of interest form asks you for evidence of the needs you have identified and also for evidence that your interventions will meet the aims of the programme. There are many ways of demonstrating evidence as it is likely that you will want to mention a number of these:  Local research, including capturing young people’s views  Evaluations/ reports on previous projects  Qualitative evidence of impact provided by young carers, families other agencies  Academic research  Government documents/ guidance/ legislation  Resources/ tools/ support programmes you have developed

You can attach research reports/ evaluations or tools/ resources that you are intending to use or develop as part of this project. Please however, only attach documents that you refer to as demonstrating evidence of need in the application form.

Programme aims identified for all applicants to plan towards You will see from the project planning table in the application form that three of the aims for your proposed project have already been identified (See explanation above). The aims are:

Aim 1: Identify and reduce the extent of inappropriate or harmful caring responsibilities taken on by children. Your project must aim to identify and reduce the extent of inappropriate caring responsibilities taken on by children. This can be displayed by a reduction in the number of hours of inappropriate caring; in the amount of anxiety provoking tasks taken on, or reduction in the most inappropriate tasks. The outcome measuring tool will help you to measure the baseline and results for this aim. We anticipate that this aim may be met by helping families to get support whilst directly supporting the young carer.

Aim 2: Produce positive outcomes for the child/young person. Your project must aim to produce measurable positive outcomes for the child/young person. We are happy for you to more tightly define the particular positive outcomes you will focus on, such as an increase in physical or emotional well being or in educational attendance or attainment. The outcome measuring tool will help you to measure the baseline and results for the aims of improving educational attendance and physical and emotional well-being.

Aim 3: Produce useful learning for other organisations considering similar work.

You should demonstrate that other organisations will be able to learn from the project you propose. This will be much easier to demonstrate if your project is specific and has a tightly defined focus, such as focusing on a specific group of young carers, a specific community or a specific intervention. Projects which are broad in scope or involve lots of different kinds of interventions may struggle with this. We must stress that this might not involve work that is new to you but could be of value to other services. We will be asking, Is this a project, intervention or approach that other organisations may wish to emulate? What will the sector find out about working with young carers if this project is funded? Learning products could include proformas, resources or support plans developed for the work or the results of evaluation activities. We do not expect you to set resources aside for wide training programmes and you do not need to include plans for dissemination of learning to other organisations. It is a condition of grant that applicants will contribute information and resources to a toolkit for other organisations, and applicants may be invited to contribute to seminars or learning events.

Aim 4: Applicants have the option to identify an additional project aim based on local project needs. If you choose to include an additional aim, it should be complimentary to Aims 1 and 2.

What will your application be assessed on? Your application will be assessed on the basis of how well it meets the aims of this programme. We will fund up to 12 projects that will demonstrate the following:  Is the work primarily direct support to young carers?  Does your proposed work demonstrate that it will reduce inappropriate caring roles taken on by young carers and produce positive outcomes for young carers?  Is the need well evidenced and are the suggested interventions well thought through?  Will the work generate learning and is the applicant committed to producing learning for other organisations?  Is the work targeted at under-represented communities or hard to reach young carers?  Is the work targeted at the most vulnerable young carers or those with the heaviest caring responsibilities?  All bids must demonstrate that the impact of the work on young carers’ families has been considered. The programme will welcome work which aims to strengthen families while supporting young carers.

Are there any additional conditions attached to the funding?  A willingness to engage with the Red Nose Day (2009) filming team where this is appropriate. This will only happen with the permission of the young people involved. Our Media Team will support any organisations involved in filming. The young people’s anonymity will be protected where required.  Agreement that Comic Relief and The Princess Royal Trust for Carers may use the names of funded organisations (and projects on which any grant monies are spent) in its reports and publicity materials.

Completing the Project Planning Table Your project must aim to reach hard to reach young carers or young carers from under- represented groups/ communities. All of the young carers you reach must also be those who have the heaviest emotional or physical caring responsibilities, or who are most affected by their caring responsibilities. You may wish to further define a very specific group or groups that you are targeting (such as young carers who are bullied, or young carers from a specific BME community), so the project planning table includes the option to do this. Your project may be aimed at young carers who meet our criteria more generally, in which case it is not necessary to fill this section in.

On the expression of interest form, you are asked for your objectives and how you will know if you have achieved the programme aims. The project planning table, which has four columns is explained as follows:

1. Column one - As the funding programme is tightly focused in achieving specific changes relating to young carers, we have already selected three of the outcomes which are the programme aims. However, we recognise the need to allow projects to deliver work which is specifically focusing on the local situation, and so, we invite applicants to plan a further aim in column one. This aim should address the needs you have identified. For instance, if the need you have identified is that a group of young carers is adversely affected by being bullied, a relevant aim might be: “To improve the self-confidence of young carers who are bullied”. Or you might feel that young carers from ethnic minority communities are under-represented in your service, in which case a relevant aim could be: “To develop services that are attractive to young carers from ethnic minority communities”.

2. Column 2 - Each programme aim should be broken down into a maximum of three objectives, which describe the pieces of work you will do to achieve the aim. For instance, you may feel that a programme of peer mentoring is one objective that could help to achieve the aim of improving young carers’ emotional well being. Or helping young carers have their views heard by professionals who support their parents could be an objective that results in a long term reduction of inappropriate caring. Producing and testing a new activity for young carers who have been bullied could be an objective that meets the aim of producing learning for other organisations.

3. Column 3 - asks you to identify how your objectives will meet the programme aims. This is an opportunity to give a little more detail on the thinking behind the interventions you have identified in column 2. What do you expect the work you have described to achieve and how will this contribute towards achieving the programme aims in column 1?

4. Column 4 - The final column asks you to identify the evidence you have for believing that your objectives will meet the programme aims. This is an opportunity for you to examine any assumptions you have made about what works, and to demonstrate that your practice is evidence based. See note on evidence below.

Additional resources for project planning  Charities Evaluation Services website  Big Lottery Fund – Explaining the Difference your Project Makes: ‘A BIG guide to using an outcomes approach’ (2006, Big Lottery Fund)

What kinds of work we will fund? We will fund revenue costs (ongoing costs such as staff wages, monthly bills). We will also fund capital costs (one off costs such as purchasing a piece of equipment) up to 10% of the total application.

We support the principle of full cost recovery. This means that we expect your budget to reflect the real cost to your organisation of the proposed work, including:  Recruitment costs if applicable  Office costs such as heating, lighting, rent and IT costs if applicable  Training, travel expenses and line management if applicable

We require these “over head” costs to be itemised on the application form. A full budget breakdown will only be required for the stage two application.

What kinds of work we will not fund? We do not make grants for any of these types of work:  General appeals  Sponsorship or marketing appeals  Mainstream educational activity  Promotion of religion  Trips abroad  Replacement of statutory funding  Activities primarily the responsibility of central or local government or health authorities  The purchase of minibuses  Work that has already taken place  Capital grants for compliance with the Disability Discrimination Act

Monitoring and evaluation Our involvement doesn’t end with awarding the grant. There are two aspects to the monitoring and evaluation of funded work:

1. A major part of the monitoring and evaluation will involve funded projects using a specific measuring tool, to measure the outcomes of interventions on young carers. Funded projects will receive guidance on how to use this tool once awards have been made. What we ask for at this stage is a commitment to use these methods. 2. We will want to see evidence that you are monitoring and evaluating your progress against the targets you have set. We will ask for a brief interim report six months after funding, followed by annual reports for each year the project is funded. These reports will include financial information on how the money has been spent against your original budget, and a progress report on your achievements based upon the output and outcome targets presented in your second stage application. 3. As part of your monitoring requirements you will be asked to gather monitoring information about the young carers who are directly benefiting from this funding. This will be the same information we have asked you to provide in the application forms. You may find that some of the young carers you are working with belong to one or more of the groups/communities listed. We would like to know about all of the groups/communities that the young carers belong to, so please include these young carers under each relevant group.

4. Where we ask you to report on carers’ families you are supporting from refugee and asylum seeking communities, please use the definition provided to record this data: ‘A child who has been recognised (or whose parents have been recognised) as a refugee by the UK government; who has been granted time-limited permission to remain in the UK, or who is awaiting the decision on an application for asylum or an appeal against refusal of asylum’. 5. As a condition of funding and a specific aim of the programme, we will ask for evidence of learning which we will gather from funded projects that will help us to produce a ToolKit of resources, ideas and lessons learnt. This will be made available to all Young Carers Services. We will gather this information over the phone and through the monitoring and evaluation forms. 6. We may also visit organisations funded by the grant programme. Your willingness to engage with this process is a condition of funding.

How do we apply? 1. Read these guidelines in full. If you still have any queries, please contact our Grants Team (contact details below). 2. You can download application forms from www.carers.org . You can then either print them out and fill them in by hand, ensuring you use black ink, or fill them in on your computer and print them out. We need your original signature on the form and therefore, we cannot accept faxed or emailed applications. 3. Ensure you enclose all the documents we ask for. Please see ‘What do we need to send with our application’ below, and complete the Checklist at the end of your application form before sending it to us. 4. You must ensure that a referee completes Part D of your application. You should make every endeavour to get a professional person in the community to act as your referee. 5. Ensure the declaration is signed by either the Chair Person or Treasurer of your organisation. 6. Make a copy for yourself and send us the original plus one extra copy. You need to send us only one copy of each of the extra documents we ask for. 7. We recommend that you use the Royal Mail Recorded Delivery Service if you plan to send us your application on or close to the application deadlines. To make it fair for everyone, we strictly enforce these deadlines. As a result, if your application reaches us after 5pm on the deadline, we will not consider your application. 8. Our contact details: Email: [email protected] Phone: 0207 709 1332 Address: Young Carers Grants Programme 2, The Princess Royal Trust for Carers Unit 14 Bourne Court Unity Trading Estate Southend Road WOODFORD GREEN IG8 8HD

What do we need to send with our application? Applicants must enclose a copy of their organisation’s:

 Child Safeguarding Policy and procedures (and Safeguarding Vulnerable Adults Policy if this is applicable to your work)  Equal Opportunities Policy  Risk Assessment Forms  Signed Constitution/Memorandum and Articles of Association  Last year’s (or the most recently published) annual accounts and a copy of a bank statement (no more than three months old)  Organisational budget for the current financial year, showing income and expenditure  Current certificates of Public and Employer’s Liability Insurance

If you are not sure that your Safeguarding and Risk Assessment Policies are up to date or comprehensive, we can supply you with a Trust template. This can be used as a basis for developing your own policies and procedures that reflect your local situation. Please contact us if you require any of these.

On your application form, you are asked to sign a declaration that your insurance covers the proposed activities and that all volunteers and employees working with young people receive a Criminal Records Bureau Enhanced Disclosure or the equivalent police check for your nation. Your application form must also be signed by one independent referee who knows your organisation and its work.

Other useful funding information

There are many other organisations that may be able to support your work. Here are a couple of directories you may find useful:  'Directory of Grant-Making Trusts' published by the Charities Aid Foundation (CAF)  'A Guide to the Major Trusts' published by the Directory of Social Change.

You can also find a list of other funders' websites at the Association of Charitable Foundations website or on the funding database 'Funderfinder' which can be accessed at your local Council for Voluntary Services.  CAF - http://www.cafonline.org/  Directory of Social Change - http://www.dsc.org.uk/  Association of Charitable Foundations - http://www.acf.org.uk/  NACVS - http://www.nacvs.org.uk/