Nurturing Relationships Now Open

We want to see a Scotland where people, families and communities can thrive and not be trapped in cycles of poverty and trauma. We want to support nurturing relationships within families and communities, to help break the cycle between persistent poverty and intergenerational trauma, and support recovery.

With our updated guidance now available, our Nurturing Relationships open call is for registered charities working in Scotland, with an annual income of over £30,000 and up to £2 million.

Applications open from 27^th November and close at 12 noon, 24^th January 2025.

When we launched our ten-year strategy on Poverty and Trauma in Autumn 2020, we committed to cycles of continuous learning and improvement. Since then, one of our four primary themes (Emotional Wellbeing and Relationships, EWR) has accounted for the majority of our expenditure. Through analysing where our funding is going and its impact, we recognised that we needed to re-focus this theme, to ensure it is more closely aligned with our Mission to prevent and reduce poverty and trauma for people and communities in Scotland.

Through the work we fund under our Nurturing Relationships theme, we want to contribute to solutions which break the cycle between persistent poverty and intergenerational trauma, addressing the impacts of trauma within families, and for individuals facing severe and multiple disadvantage, where a significant aggravating factor is the experience of poverty.

We want to contribute to preventing and reducing poverty and trauma by funding work which addresses the following priorities:

1. Preventative support for families in poverty (including children and their caregivers), to help build and maintain strong family relationships, and reduce the risk of intergenerational trauma.

2. Whole family support for families (including children and their caregivers) in care, or on the edges of care, to address the impacts of persistent poverty and intergenerational trauma. We will also fund services for care experienced young people who are not in a family setting under this priority.

3. Crisis support at the point of family breakdown, including support for women and children experiencing domestic abuse. We particularly want to support:

• Services supporting families on low incomes, particularly in areas of deprivation, or remote and rural communities.
• Services which also provide support to build financial security.
• Services which provide whole family support.

4. Recovery and restorative approaches to address the impacts of childhood trauma, homelessness, substance misuse and/or offending.

We expect to fund a relatively small number of organisations through this initial open call, whose work is most strongly aligned with our priorities. Whilst we are opening Nurturing Relationships on a time-limited basis initially, there will also be further opportunities to apply in the new financial year.