Innovation Fund
Our Innovation Fund was set up as a way of enhancing and extending our core programme offer and addressing gaps and priority areas.
With funding of up to £100,000 available for each project, it allowed organisations to pilot new, innovative approaches robustly over a period of a year, with potential for it to become a fully-fledged Better Start Bradford project.
Due to COVID-19, the projects were only able to part-deliver what they intended and were extended, with the majority running from 2020-2022 (with HIDVA ending March 2025).
The main criteria were that projects:
- Addressed one of our core outcome areas:
- Social and emotional development
- Language and communication
- Health and nutrition
- Systems change
- Were aimed at our core audiences of expectant families and/or families with children aged 0-3
- Addressed a gap in terms of the local community/families (for example dads/male carers, families from Central and Eastern Europe)
- Allowed for innovation and creativity when addressing key public health themes such as oral health and adverse childhood experiences (ACEs).
Innovation Fund Projects
The University of Leeds received funding to improve oral health for 0-3s to deliver their ‘Enhancing the HABIT’ oral health intervention with the area’s Health Visitors.
Horton Community Farm and Grow To School joined forces to create their Growing Together project to bring parents/carers and young children together to learn to grow, cook and eat their own produce.
The HIDVA project identifies victims at early stages of domestic abuse and intervenes to provide multiagency support, while upskilling practitioners on how to recognise and respond to domestic abuse.
Older Yet Wiser received funding to deliver a series of workshops for grandparents with child-caring responsibilities to enable them to contribute to their grandchildren’s social and emotional wellbeing.
Resilient Dads is a holistic personal development and parenting skills programme aiming to develop the skills and competence of dads/male carers to support the social, emotional, and cognitive development of their 0-3s.
The Play Gym and Hubert St. Kitchen provides a fun, free, creative play space for young children, and provides parents/carers the opportunity to access support, practical training and advice.