Health and wellbeing

The National Centre for Resilience (NCR) have announced that their ‘Community Councils Fund’ is open with applications closing on 31 January 2024.

The funding is for Community Councils to develop local resilience plans that address potential natural hazards such as heavy snow, landslides, high winds, and other disruptive events and subsequently enhance their local community preparedness and response to natural hazards.

The capital fund from The Robertson Trust is open to applications from registered charities with an annual income of between £25,000 and £2 million. Applications should support work that addresses the impacts of poverty and/or trauma under one or more of the following themes:

Minister for Keeping the Promise Natalie Don has announced the six successful locations that will become home to Scotland’s first Bairns’ Hoose test sites.

Scottish farming and crofting families who have been severely hit by October’s extreme weather events are being encouraged to contact RSABI to apply for support via a Flooding Crisis Fund to support those who were most affected.

RSABI, the charity which provides practical, emotional and financial support to people in Scottish agriculture, is offering payments of up to £1000 per farming family business for those who experienced greatest loss as a result of the extreme rainfall and flooding.

Views are being sought on the introduction of the Pension Age Winter Heating Payment, a new benefit to replace the UK Government’s Winter Fuel Payment in Scotland.

The Scottish Government has previously committed to delivering the new payment on a like-for-like basis with the existing benefit. It will help more than a million pensioners with heating costs in the winter.

A Memorial Book is now open for anyone who has experienced pregnancy or baby loss prior to 24 weeks.

The book, produced jointly by the Scottish Government and National Records of Scotland, will give parents an opportunity – if they wish – to commemorate their loss with a physical record. It was developed after listening to people who have experienced a pregnancy or baby loss prior to 24 weeks of pregnancy and is a free and entirely optional service.

The Scottish Government is teaming up with MND Scotland to fund research to investigate potential causes of and therapies for motor neuron disease (MND).

Each partner is contributing £125,000 to provide the opportunity for a clinical professional to undertake a PhD to both enhance MND research and MND clinical capacity in NHS Scotland. The three-year Clinical Academic Fellowship will start in 2024.

Farmers in North Ayrshire, West Aberdeenshire and Orkney will have the opportunity to benefit from free business support, worth around £120,000, via the 2023/24 Farm Resilience Programme which starts this month.