Early Action System Change Programme

The Early Action System Change Programme will invest up to £7.5m to help accelerate a shift to investing a greater share of public resources in effective, early action. It will do this by offering dedicated resources to bring together local multi- agency partnerships to co-design longer term, preventative approaches in one of three key areas: - Healthy Diet & Active Lifestyle - Children, young people & families, and - Women and the criminal justice system. Systems change is a complex area and this programme seeks to influence the expenditure and delivery plans of public sector agencies and their partners, as well as fostering a genuine culture of community led decision making and resource allocation. While we have considerable investment expertise within the Fund in these areas, we would benefit from further training, expert advice and guidance about how to achieve effective systems change within local authority, regional or strategic area partnership settings and support to scrutinise and influence local area partnership delivery, commissioning and spending plans. This contract, then, is to support Big Lottery Fund Scotland Directorate Early Action staff in three key areas: a) Mentoring key personnel (small team and one to one staff development) across the assessment and decision making stages, to enhance their knowledge, skills and confidence to support the local area partnerships to frame, achieve and learn from well-developed change strategies. b) Providing expert analysis of early stage proposals to the Fund within this programme, with a particular emphasis on assessing partners' change management readiness, the rationale for their local systems change and intended approach, and c) On-going coaching support through initial Early Action proposal implementation (supporting Fund staff to review and approve more detailed partnership delivery plans, as well as local work getting underway).