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New Provider Innovation Fund

News Supporting people
Providing Hope (left to right): Eric Brown, East Belfast Mission, Leigh Brown, Positive Futures, Noelle Collins, Belfast and Lisburn Women’s Aid, Professor Peter Roberts, Chairman, The Housing Executive, Paul Price, Department for Communities, Kate Martin, MACS, Alistair Mawhinney, Supporting People, Housing Executive.
Providing Hope (left to right): Eric Brown, East Belfast Mission, Leigh Brown, Positive Futures, Noelle Collins, Belfast and Lisburn Women’s Aid, Professor Peter Roberts, Chairman, The Housing Executive, Paul Price, Department for Communities, Kate Martin, MACS, Alistair Mawhinney, Supporting People, Housing Executive.

Supporting People service providers, who assist some of the most vulnerable groups in our society, are benefiting from a new funding initiative in the form of the Supporting People, Provider Innovation Fund (PIF).

The fund was launched in May 2019, with successful awards being made in September 2019. 

Over £750,000 has been made available for the initial year of this Fund by the Department for Communities and through Supporting People grants. 

Some of the successful awards include the following:

  • Women’s Aid in Belfast and Lisburn are taking forward an organisational restructure to support the provision of floating support services that assist people at risk of domestic violence.
  • The learning disability charity Positive Futures enhancing digitalisation processes, using cloud based software to implement new risk and performance management systems.
  • A new Digital Hub being put in place by the East Belfast Mission to allow housing support to be delivered to service users via new IT systems, enabling floating support staff to work more effectively.
  • Children and young people support charity MACS are in the process of introducing a new Leadership Development Programme to enhance performance and increase accountability in their team. 

Housing Executive Chairman, Professor Peter Roberts, commented: “We are pleased to offer service providers the opportunity to submit bids to our new Provider Innovation Fund. 

“I would like to acknowledge the partnership work which has taken place to develop the fund.  

“The funding applications received spanned across various projects that embraced the ethos of working innovatively and I would like to extend my congratulations to all those who were successful.  

“I look forward to seeing how these projects will impact supporting people services, benefiting service users now and in the future.”  

In response, Paul Price, Director of Social Housing Policy and Oversight in the Department for Communities, stated: “I congratulate service providers in submitting such excellent projects under the new PIF initiative, despite such a challenging Year 1 timeframe.  

“The ultimate aim of the PIF is to assist efficiency and effectiveness within the Supporting People sector, enabling more resources to be channeled to frontline delivery.  

“Ultimately, the innovation this investment funds will benefit Supporting People service users.”

For more information, visit the Supporting People section on our website.