Community foundations blueprint for better health
The NHS’s new 10-year plan is taking bold steps: move care out of hospitals and into communities, shift focus from treatment to prevention, and embrace digital innovation. All welcome ambitions. But here’s the truth: these shifts won’t work without the community sector. And they certainly won’t work without funding.
At Point North, we’ve been delivering the principles of this new plan for 30 years, but with funding.
Now, we’re proud to be one of the 28 community foundations featured in Preventative Power: Community Foundations Partnering with Health, a new report we commissioned in partnership with Place Matters. This report shows how community foundations like ours are already shaping a healthier, fairer UK by supporting grassroots organisations to deliver health and wellbeing projects.
A proven model that works
Community foundations are more than funders. We are connectors, listeners, challengers and collaborators.
Through place-based giving, we support local people to create solutions that actually work for them.
Take our own partnership with the Chester-le-Street Primary Care Network. Together, we funded frontline projects that tackled food poverty, supported social prescribing, and helped people into work. We reached over 12,000 people and improved health outcomes at a time of national crisis (Covid-19).
Across the UK, our fellow community foundations are doing the same. Together, we distribute more than £170 million a year to the people and places that need it most. We:
- Delivered multi-year funding that allowed grassroots groups to plan and scale
- Enabled VCSE organisations to work alongside the NHS as equal partners
- Supported culturally sensitive mental health services for communities
- Unlocked millions in additional match funding, stretching NHS investment further
This is what good partnership looks like. And yet, too often, these community-led efforts are precariously funded, patchy, or one-off.
Let’s be clear: charities and community groups need to be funded properly.
We welcome the ambition of the new NHS 10-Year Plan. But we also know ambition alone doesn’t heal. It must be backed by strategic investment in the infrastructure that’s already doing the work.
The NHS wants to move from hospitals to communities, great. But communities need capacity. That means funding the warm spaces, family advocates, and support groups already keeping people well.
It wants to focus on prevention, good. But prevention doesn’t start with policy. It starts with people. With listening. With trust.
It wants to go digital, yes. But many of the people we support in County Durham, Tees Valley and the wider North East are digitally excluded. If you don’t pair digital with face-to-face, you risk deepening inequality.
To make this plan real, we’re calling for:
- Long-term, flexible funding for the VCSE sector to sustain the work that’s proven to work.
- True partnership between NHS systems and community foundations to design solutions together.
- Investment in infrastructure so grassroots groups can innovate, collaborate, and grow.
The bigger picture
The bigger pictureIn places like County Durham, Tees Valley and the wider North East, health can’t improve until poverty does.
And so, at Point North, our stance remains: we urgently need to address the root causes of poor health, which include poverty, inadequate housing, food insecurity, and low wages.
The prevention of ill health is not just a medical issue.
We continue to call for a joined-up, place-based approach that considers the bigger picture, tackling health inequalities as part of the broader challenges our communities face.
Get in touch with us
Interested in how Point North supports local health and wellbeing projects across County Durham, Tees Valley and the wider North East?
We’d love to hear from you. Let’s talk about the work we’re already backing and how together, we can help our communities live healthier, happier lives.
0191 378 6340
