The Fulfilling Lives programme
The National Lottery Community Fund invested £112 million over 8 years in local partnerships in 12 areas across England, helping those experiencing multiple disadvantage access more joined-up services tailored to their needs. Multiple disadvantage is defined as experience of two or more of homelessness, substance misuse, reoffending and mental ill-health.
The programme changed lives, systems and involved beneficiaries. The programme was not a preventative programme, but instead aimed to better support those with entrenched needs otherwise disengaged with services. The programme usedcoproduction to put people with lived experience in the lead and built on their assets to end the revolving door of disjointed care for adults.
The programme had three main outcomes:
- People experiencing multiple disadvantage manage their lives better through access to person-centred and co-ordinated services.
- Services are tailored and better connected, with service users able to fully take part in effective service design and delivery.
- Shared learning and the improved measurement of outcomes will demonstrate the impact of service models to key stakeholders and influence future programme design by local services.
The programme also had a strong focus on systems change, so that these new ways of working could become sustainable. Each of the 12 partnerships created their own local systems change plan with a series of priorities for the remainder of the programme. Taken together, five common themes emerged which formed the national systems change focus. The system change priorities can be read here.
Since the closure of the Fulfilling Lives programme, some of the involved local areas and partnerships have gone on to receive further funding under the Changing Futures programme, funded by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities.