South Yorkshire Health and Growth Accelerator Community Grants

Introduction

The Health and Growth Accelerator (HGA) Community Grants programme is part of the wider Pathways to Work initiative. HGA aims to integrate employment and health interventions, ensuring people can stay in, or return to work while improving overall workforce wellbeing.  The key outcome of the whole programme is to prevent 950 people from becoming economically inactive in 2025/26 through:

• Improving workplace health support and early intervention
• Integrating employment and health services to provide a cohesive support system
• Improving workforce retention by helping employers and employees manage long-term health conditions
• Enhancing collaboration between NHS, Local Authorities, employers, and voluntary sectors
• Improving the health of people and families living in South Yorkshire and supporting more people to stay in work, or return to work sooner

An open call for applications will be invited from Tuesday 5th August. Applications are welcomed from voluntary and community organisations who can demonstrate that they can deliver activities in 2025-26 that will support Health and Growth Accelerator priorities 1 and 2 as follows: 

Priority One: To support adults (18+) in work who have had recent history of absences from work due to mild to moderate mental health and mood disorders, musculoskeletal conditions, and chronic pain. 

Priority Two: To support young people aged 16 – 24 who have a self-reported or diagnosed low to moderate anxiety or depression, and either:

• are in education, but have had periods of absence
• are in employment, but have had periods of absence
• are struggling to enter the workplace  

due to their health needs. This includes young people who are neurodiverse.

Please read the attached Guidance Notes for the priority relevant to your activity.

What sort of projects do you want to see in my application?

The types of activities that the programme will fund are community led nature-based connections, creative health approaches, and other activities that can deliver the programme outcomes. 

Community Led Nature Based Support

Activities supporting people to engage in nature-based interventions including both green and blue (water) environments. 

• Local walking schemes
• Community gardening projects,
• Conservation volunteering
• Green gyms
• Fishing,
• Paddle sports
• Physical activity sessions which encourage people to move more.

Creative Health Based Support

Creative Health is defined as creative approaches and activities which have benefits for our health and wellbeing including

• Visual and Performing arts
• Craft sessions and therapy 
• Film, literature and music
• Cooking and creative activities in nature

Other Activities

The VCSE sector delivers a breadth of support and impact for adults and young people. Applications that are for any other activities with a track record in delivering support and impact for people in priorities one and two are welcome.

We will fund existing activities that can support our programme objectives and need additional funding to expand, develop or adapt. We expect that all groups we fund will be supporting individuals through other referral routes as well which may include self-referrals, but crucially, your activity must be able to prioritise referrals from this HGA Hub Pathway and offer timely support. This will be a condition of your grant award

Please make sure you read the appropriate Guidance Notes before submitting your application.

How much can I apply for?

Total funding available through this grant will be £585,000 for projects running from autumn 2025 – March 2026.

The majority of successful grants will be one-off support of up to £15,000. If your project is in collaboration with another delivery partner and/or can clearly meet more than one of the Health and Growth Accelerator outcomes, and/or works across more than one Place we can consider exceptional grants of up to £30,000 but you should contact us for a discussion about this before submitting an application. Please contact Jess O’Neill or Emma Mallinson by Telephone  0114 242 4857 or via Email grants@sycf.org.uk

Grant funding can support project costs including operating and revenue costs.

Because of the monitoring requirements in this programme, we will expect that you have included appropriate costings in your project budget to support capacity. Please do not apply if you do not think you can meet the monitoring requirements for this fund.

When can I apply?

Applications will be open to groups in South Yorkshire from Tuesday 5th August. Submissions should be received before 9am, Monday 1^st September.

Projects should be ready to start from 29th September 2025.

Please note, it is a requirement of this funding that your grant should be spent by 31^st March 2026. Please keep this in mind when deciding how much your organisation applies for.

Supporting documents required:

• A governing document (e.g. a constitution or memorandum of association),
• List of board or management committee members of at least three unrelated people,
• Have a bank account in the name of the group requiring at least two unrelated signatories.
• Appropriate and up to date Safeguarding Policy and Procedure documents.