Co-Designing a community-led fund based on community needs
Impact on Urban Health is an independent place-based health foundation committed to tackling complex health challenges across Lambeth and Southwark
The Wellcome Trust is a global charitable foundation - which exists to improve health for everyone.
Team:
Genevieve Laurier
Fancy Sinantha
Marion Brossard
Keisha Simms
Shaun Danquah
Karis Theophane
TSIP is a strategic partner with Guy's and St Thomas' Charity (GSTC) and The Wellcome Trust to research, design and explore what a democratic, inclusive and equity driven grant-making fund might look like for the communities of Lambeth and Southwark. We have been working to co-design a community led fund where local people in Southwark not only define the issues and identify solutions but make decisions about how money is spent locally.
In an effort to improve the long term health of residents and reduce progression from one to many long term conditions, GSTC and Wellcome Trust sought to pursue more collaborative ways to shift funding power to communities. As a place-based funder, GSTC takes a long-term view to building relationships wanted to ensure that residents of Lambeth and Southwark have agency in the processes that it creates. Over a year, TSIP worked closely with the local community in Walworth to understand the interest in a community-led fund and design what a participatory model would look like. This included initial research via interviews, Vox Pop, events and more. It progressed to taking a cohort through a design process to create a new way of funding where the community not only identified challenges and designed solutions, but allocated funds based on the wider community need.
In delivering this work, our team is using human-centric design and research principles to inform conversations with residents and to co-design models and concepts, together, that will eventually be piloted and prototyped. At the very heart of this initiative is to challenge and change the power dynamics of health funding and preventative care with local communities in Lambeth and Southwark.
So far, this design process led to the creation of a community-led membership fund, without application forms or any individual/group having a ‘yes/no’ decision on how money is allocated. Instead, it relies on bringing individuals with ideas together with those they would benefit, and with ‘sponsors’ to help them ensure feasibility, culminating in a deliberative process. Four projects were funded in the trial and funding has been secured for a four-year pilot in Lambeth and Southwark. You can follow this ongoing project on our blog.