From the 1980s up until the early 2000s, it was nearly impossible for someone living with HIV to access insurance products, and they often struggled to access products linked to insurance, such as mortgages. For many gay and bisexual men (regardless of their HIV status), invasive “lifestyle” questionnaires, mandatory HIV testing, heavily-loaded premiums and a refusal to accept the validity of long-term relationships, were a common experience when seeking life and protection insurance.

Happily, thanks to persistent campaigning by LGBT+ and HIV activists and the introduction of strict guidelines on what can be asked in application processes, many of these practices have now been eradicated and access has been improved.

People living with HIV can now access banking services, general insurance products such as motor, buildings, and home contents, and pensions and savings products without any need to mention their status.

Where health information is required, there have also been improvements to access. Recent reforms in travel insurance mean that someone with a CD4 count of 400 or above and an undetectable viral load who is otherwise healthy should be able to get cover at no extra cost.[1] Life insurance for people living with HIV has been available since 2009, and the quality of cover is rapidly improving.[2]

Evidently, access has improved considerably for people living with HIV and this should be celebrated. However, the research NAT took in the report HIV and Finance highlights that there is still room for improvement.

NAT found that one in four (25%) people living with HIV have been refused a financial product or quoted an unaffordable insurance premium in the last five years. Some insurance products, such as income protection insurance and critical illness cover, still remain completely unavailable to people living with HIV. Given the significant improvements in mortality and morbidity of people living with HIV since the introduction of effective treatment, NAT question whether this treatment is proportionate to the reality of living with HIV today.

People living with HIV often struggle to navigate a marketplace which caters for the mainstream – with only three in ten (28%) saying they knew where to look for HIV-inclusive financial products.

NAT also identified persistent remnants of the discriminatory past. Critical illness cover policies will only pay claims for HIV when acquired through an occupational injury or assault. By singling out HIV as the only condition where mode of transmission is relevant to the success of a claim, insurance providers are continuing to engage in stigmatising and discriminatory practice.

Bad practice past and present, as well as current levels of societal stigma, has led to three in five (60%) people living with HIV avoiding applying for financial products because of their HIV status. This self-exclusion is largely due to fears of refusal, higher costs and stigma.

Financial products protect against financial shocks and help promote financial resilience, which can support adherence to treatment and the long-term financial security of an ageing population of people living with HIV. It is therefore crucial that HIV organisations and financial service providers work together to more widely disseminate information to improve understanding of the availability of financial products to people living with HIV.

People living with HIV aren’t alone in facing these barriers to access. They are part of the 15 million people living with a long-term condition in the UK today, and we know that many in this group struggle with the same barriers to access as those living with HIV.

The report highlights that these issues require strategic action from a range of stakeholders, including the financial services industry, the financial services regulator (the Financial Conduct Authority), and the government. NAT have outlined a range of policy and practice recommendations that should be implemented, whilst recognising that further work is needed to resolve some of the more complex issues of access. NAT is determined to continue championing the financial inclusion of people living with HIV, ensuring our recommendations become a reality.

The report states improving access is a win-win situation for all involved. It presents a significant market opportunity for businesses who adapt their approach to better meet the needs of people with HIV and other long-term conditions. It ensures that regulators and governments are protecting consumers and citizens from harm. Finally, and most importantly from NAT’s perspective, it enables people living with HIV and other long-term conditions to better protect themselves financially.

The full details of our research and recommendations are outlined in the report HIV and Finance: Exploring access to financial services for people living with HIV in the UK.

If you are living with HIV and need further information on the availability of financial products, you can visit NAM Aidsmap’s resource on Personal Finance.

[1] Viral load tests measure the amount of HIV’s genetic material in a blood sample, whilst CD4 count tests indicate the strength of the immune system. A viral load below 50 is classed as undetectable – meaning the virus is at a very low level and cannot be passed on. CD4 count. People living with HIV who have a CD4 count over 500 are usually in good health. For further information see http://www.aidsmap.com/CD4-viral-load-amp-other-tests/page/1327442/

[2] For example, life insurance terms were usually capped at 10 years when policies were first introduced in 2009. Recent research by specialist broker Unusual Risks showed that the average length term insured is now 19 years, with the longest term at 25 years.

Blog post shared from NAT.org.uk

Social investment can be complex. At its best, a well-functioning social investment market prioritises impact and catalyses social change. The goal is to start with the beneficiary and maximise social outcomes. In reality, risk, return, and deal structures often take priority – leading to what we call a “finance first” approach. The result is that not enough charities and social enterprises access simple, affordable, repayable finance.

I have heard mixed views on the social investment market. After years of hard work to build the sector, many are discouraged. There are still many challenges. The sustainability of many funds and advisors remains uncertain. Social investment intermediaries struggle to meet the finance needs of the bulk of the social sector. Yet others are bullish about the promise of impact investing, for-profit social businesses, and developing impact funds for mainstream financial markets.

Social innovation is happening in communities all over the UK. Creative solutions to health, homelessness or housing – to name a few – are inspiring. These initiatives need funding. In the ‘new normal’, uncertainty prevails and access to grants or public resources is scarce. Social investment can be a resource for enterprise-driven charities or social enterprises to achieve mission with new revenue streams.

The social investment market has reached a turning point. Investing in social ventures, property initiatives and secured loans has worked reasonably well. But providing charities and social enterprises with low cost, unsecured, blended finance, hasn’t really taken off. The pipeline for new investments is relatively thin. Small to medium sized charities, social enterprises and community businesses form the core of the UK social sector, where real impact is generated. Can we continue to ignore the finance gap?

Social investment has come a long way since 2009 when the Barrow Cadbury Trust made its first foray into the current market. How will the sector define its next phase of development? Should the market move upstream to attract mainstream investors? A “finance first” model that requires market-level returns drives many intermediaries to move in this direction. What happens if social investment becomes disconnected from the communities where impact is created?

Social investment is only a good thing if it keeps social mission at its heart. Values like diversity, equality, social justice, and mission are critical. If we lose sight of these values in the market, where will the “social” be in social investment? The market will simply reflect the existing financial sector.

At this stage, there are more questions than answers. The immature state of the market means there are many resource and infrastructure gaps. Social enterprises need capacity building. More diverse participants with strong connections to places or sectors may be required. No doubt the solution lies in a combination of factors.

Some of these challenges can be addressed by catalysing shared resources and market infrastructure; and by testing new ways for existing voluntary sector infrastructure to engage with social investment. The Connect Fund will strive to support positive solutions to build a better social investment market through a process of consultation and collaboration, underpinned by learning.

Jessica Brown, Connect Fund Manager

14 June 2017

Taking Account of Maturity: A Guide for Probation Practitioners was published by T2A in 2013; by 2016 the Guide had been mentioned in NOMS guidance for pre-sentence reporting, marking a significant official acceptance. What happened in the interval?

In the publication Making Sense of Maturity, research with practitioners and managers shows ways in which the Guide was disseminated and embraced within probation services, and how they see it in the present context. We wanted to find out how the Guide was being used to develop frontline probation practice, to discover any ‘ripple’ effects (for example, on other agencies), to provide a template for monitoring use of the Guide and to scope out directions for future guidance.

Because fieldwork started in 2014, at the point when Transforming Rehabilitation brought abrupt structural changes, the research was delayed as probation grappled with its new priorities. Later, it proved possible to listen to practitioners who were operating with the Guide in the new context that prevails today. Amid the turbulence, the buy-in of senior management to promoting a maturity agenda was a factor in making the Guide a part of practice with young adults, though not all probation areas will have followed the same path. The Guide’s use was enhanced by practice briefings and support which could then chime with organisational delivery, especially by specialist teams.

Maturity looks different from the point of view of probation practice, because there are specific social pathways that have created challenges to the maturity of young adults under supervision.

‘So maturity is fundamental, it’s absolutely fundamental. About 30% of our young people have been in care. 50% of them didn’t finish school. Out of the 50% that did, only 5% got a formal qualification. So the rites of passage that you would normally associate with teenage growth and maturity, they just haven’t hit those milestones.’ (Probation manager)

Missing out on education, going through the care system, having difficulty communicating with agencies: these are just some of the experiences that need to be properly understood. Good communication and the development of trust are vital if young adults are to be engaged. Hence caseloads have to be adjusted to allow time for this sensitive work and other agencies must be fully engaged.

Crucially, the future health of maturity initiatives in probation depends on: an active strategic commitment to developing practice sensitive to the maturity of young adults; and an awareness of the pathways and milestones that a well-informed social policy binding together all agencies should address. If practitioners want to turn those conditions into reality, our research will give them plenty of ammunition and evidence.

Funder collaboration is an increasingly normal part of the way foundations work. Issues as diverse as migration, mental health stigma, early intervention, women and multiple disadvantage, and child sexual exploitation are being approached by funder collaboratives of varying shapes and sizes. It still appears to be a new idea, however, to explicitly set out with the aim of co-creating priorities and actions with those working in NGOs in the field – in other words a genuinely mixed alliance. This is the story of one such alliance, one between race equality organisations and funders.

It started with a call from the Big Lottery Fund, which led to a loose alliance of funders coming together over a shared concern about ethnic inequality and social justice in late 2015. This was a diverse group working on a wide range of issues – health and wellbeing, poverty, criminal justice, arts and heritage, education, extreme disadvantage. The common thread is a concern about the stark ethnic inequalities that are apparent in systems and communities. In the criminal justice system, just to give one example, Black and Minority Ethnic (BAME) communities are over-represented in prison: approximately 25% of prisoners are from a BAME background, compared with being only 13% of the wider population. The situation is worse for under-18s: over 40% of those in secure youth institutions are from BAME backgrounds, up significantly from 25% a decade ago. Despite decades of activism and legislation it is clear that we are not born equal: race and ethnicity still have a substantial impact on life chances and experiences.

Collective dialogue

Rather than funders deciding on a course of action, in early 2016 the funder alliance began a collective dialogue with key race equality organisations, co-creating a number of priority areas. This was and remains a complicated thing – power dynamics are at play, there are questions of who is and is not at the table. Can expectations raised by the coming together of so many funders be met? Are funders really prepared to be open about their processes and to change their practice?

We haven’t resolved these issues but we are still in dialogue, being as open as we can be with each other, building relationships and reminding ourselves of our shared purpose when things get difficult. Our work has started to crystallise around two issues, and jointly we are exploring the development of a strategic communications project, and a co-ordinated response to the government’s Race Disparity Unit (which will synthesise data on racial inequalities in public services).

Hate given licence

The work of our fledgling collaborative was given an added urgency by the Referendum last June and the spike in hate crime that followed it. It is unlikely this represented a sudden upsurge in racist sentiment. Instead it seems that the rhetoric surrounding the referendum, and the post-referendum environment, has made people with racist or xenophobic views feel more comfortable expressing these openly. The election of Donald Trump and the rise of the far right across Europe adds to the sense of a continuing trend and to the importance of renewed engagement with this issue and solidarity with those directly affected.

In our collaborative, the race equality organisations reported on a growing unease and sense of threat felt by BAME organisations and communities. Funders were keen to identify some ‘quick wins’. Together we came up with ideas, which we offer as potentially helpful to others in the funder community who want to show solidarity with those affected:

• Talk about inequalities, race and racism. Mention it on your website. Name it as an issue. Keep it on the agenda.
• Talk to race equality organisations to find out what has happened post-referendum. Reporting mechanisms for hate crime are fragmented so it is not always easy to get a complete picture – supporting existing or new reporting mechanisms, or funding race equality bodies, is helpful.
• Use your convening power to bring people together to discuss the issues highlighted by the referendum and subsequent events and to consider how to respond together.
• Support work that brings people from different communities together in meaningful shared activity or in dialogue. Under the right conditions interpersonal contact is one of the most effective ways to reduce prejudice between majority and minority group members.
• Review your own policies and procedures for unintentional bias against BAME organisations. Increasing your permeability might help with this – consider offering a secondment to someone from a local BAME organisation or inviting a review of your procedures.
• Few trusts and foundations are leading by example: our senior management teams and boards lack diversity. Are there steps that you can take to improve this, or to bring diverse voices into your organisation?

Reviewing our practice

As well as working collaboratively with the race equality sector, the funder group continues with its own separate cycle of meetings, at which we discuss and reflect on our own processes and learn from each other. Members have responded in a range of ways. For example, some have undertaken equalities audits or reviewed our grant-making practices. Several of us have made ourselves more open to BAME organisations through secondments. We are learning to be comfortable saying we haven’t got it right and we want to improve.

All trusts and foundations that want to increase their contribution to race equality are very welcome to join the funder alliance, the funder/race equality sector collaborative or both. We don’t have all the answers but we think working in the spirit of genuine partnership, with all the joys and challenges it brings, is the right thing to do.

For more information contact Cathy Stancer or Debbie Pippard

noppawan09/Shutterstock

The following article was originally published on The Conversation website by Lindsey Appleyard, Coventry University and Shaun French, University of Nottingham.

British governments have been trying to improve financial inclusion for the best part of 20 years. The goal is to make it easier for people on lower incomes to get banking services, but this simple-sounding target brings with it a host of problems.

A House of Lords committee has just published the latest report on this issue, but the genesis of financial inclusion policy can be traced back to the late 1990s as part of the Labour government’s social exclusion agenda. The scope and reach of this strategy has since expanded beyond a focus on access to products and now seeks to improve people’s financial literacy to help them make their own responsible decisions around financial services.

The goal of increasing the availability of basic banking has become a tool for tackling poverty and deprivation worldwide, among governments in the global north and global south and among key institutions. In 2014, the World Bank produced what it described as the world’s most comprehensive financial exclusion database based on interviews with 150,000 people in more than 140 countries.

Muddy waters

However, broad and enthusiastic acceptance of such policy efforts has prompted doubts about the simplistic narrative of inclusion and exclusion. This way of thinking does not capture the complexities of the links between the use of financial services and poverty, life chances and socio-economic mobility. It also ignores the sliding scale of financial inclusion, from the marginally included – who rely on basic bank accounts – through to the super-included with access to a full array of affordable financial services.

You can see the complexity and contradictions clearly in innovations such as subprime products and high-cost payday lenders. They have made it increasingly difficult to draw a clear distinction between the included and the excluded. Mis-selling scandals and concerns over high charges have also shown us that financial inclusion is no guarantee of protection from exploitative practices.

Even the pursuit of better financial education offers a mixed picture. Critics have raised concerns that this shifts the focus away from structural discrimination and towards the individual failings of “irresponsible and irrational” consumers. There is a grave risk that we will fail to tackle the root causes of financial exclusion, around insecure income and work, if policy follows this route.

In the midst of this focus on customers, the government’s role has been reduced to supporting those education programmes and cajoling mainstream banks, building societies and insurers into being more inclusive.

Given the central role that financial services play in shaping everyday lives, a hands-off approach from the state is inadequate. It fails to address the injustices produced by a grossly inequitable financial system. Our recent research examined how the idea of financial citizenship might offer a route to improvements. In particular, we looked at the idea of basic financial citizenship rights and the role that might be played by UK credit unions, the organisations which, supported by government, seek to bring financial services to those on low incomes.

The idea of establishing rights was put forward by geographers Andrew Leyshon and Nigel Thrift in response to the growing lack of access to mainstream financial services. The goal would be to recognise the significance of the financial system to everyday life and set in stone the right and ability of people to participate fully in the economy.

That sounds like a laudable aspiration, but what could a politics of financial citizenship entail in practice?

Drawing on the work of political economist Craig Berry and researcher Chris Arthur, we argue that the policy debate should move on to establish a set of universal financial rights, to which the citizens of a highly financialised society such as the UK are entitled regardless of their personal or economic situation.

1. The right to participate fully in political decision-making regarding the role and regulation of the financial system. This would entail, for example, the democratisation of money supply and of the work of regulators. Ordinary people would have to be able to meaningfully engage in debates about the social usefulness of the financial system.
2. The right to a critical financial citizenship education. Financial education needs to go beyond the simple provision of knowledge and skills to understand how the financial system is currently configured. It should provide citizens with the tools to be able to think critically about money and debt, as well as the capability to effect meaningful change of the financial system.
3. The right to essential financial services that are appropriate and affordable such as a transactional bank account, savings and insurance.
4. The right to a comprehensive state safety net of financial welfare provision. This could include a real living wage to prevent a reliance on debt to meet basic needs and could go all the way through to the provision of guarantees on the returns that can be expected from private pension schemes.

Establishing this set of rights would be a major step towards enhancing the financial security and life chances of households and communities. The weight of responsibility would shift from individuals and back on to financial institutions, regulators, government and employers to provide basic financial needs. As one example, just as people in the UK are given a national insurance number when they turn 16, so the government and the banks could automatically provide a basic bank account to everyone at the age of 18.

The UK credit union movement does make efforts towards these goals, but it cannot fully mobilise financial citizenship rights largely due to its limited scale and regulatory and operational limitations. For the rights to work, they will need the support of the state, of financial institutions, regulators and employers. That would enable the country to build something less flimsy than the loose structure we have right now, which piles blame onto the consumer and relies on voluntary industry measures to pick up the slack.

Lindsey Appleyard, Research Fellow, Coventry University and Shaun French, Associate Professor in Economic Geography, University of Nottingham

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

When analysing the Budget each year it is as important to think about what is missing as well as what is included.  And this year’s Budget was no exception. Speaking on International Women’s Day, the Chancellor, Phillip Hammond, announced funding for a series of ‘women’s projects’. He promised additional resources for domestic violence and abuse (DVA) services, funding for projects to help women returning to work after a career break and money to celebrate the 100^th anniversary of some women winning the vote next year.

The actual money for these three projects was tiny in terms of the national Budget. There was £20 million for domestic violence services over three years, which although welcome, in no way replaces the money lost to the sector through successive cuts to local government, police and health budgets. The barriers faced by women returning to work are complex and structural; it is difficult to see how much difference £5 million for ‘returnships’ will solve them. And, while it is important to remember the struggle of those who fought for women’s right to vote, a better tribute might be action within political parties to increase women’s political representation rather than spending £5 million on celebrations .

Hammond was silent on the far more significant changes for women from April this year as a result of policies in previous budgets. These include limiting benefits and tax credits to the first two children, cutting the first child premium of £545 a year, and cutting some disability benefits by £29.05 a week. These will come on top of earlier changes including lowering the overall benefit cap and freezing benefits and tax credits at their 2015/16 level for four years.

Research by the Women’s Budget Group and Runnymede Trust, funded by Barrow Cadbury Trust, has shown that all the cuts and changes to tax and benefits since 2010 will cost Asian women in the poorest third of households over £2,200 a year by 2020. Black women in the same income group will lose just over £2000, while white women lose £1,459. Women will lose more than men, and the poorest and BAME women will lose most of all. When cuts to services are included the impact gets worse. Lone parents (92% of whom are women) stand to lose 18% of their overall living standard by 2020 as a result of cuts to benefits and services since 2010.

The Chancellor said nothing about these impacts in his budget speech. The Treasury did publish a cumulative impact assessment of changes since 2015 by income, but this does not include any breakdowns by gender or ethnic background.  It is hard to see how the Chancellor can meet his obligations under the Public Sector Equality Duty to have ‘due regard’ to the impact of Treasury policies on equality without carrying out this sort of assessment. The Women’s Budget Group and Runnymede have shown that these assessments are possible. The question now is, will the Treasury adopt a similar approach?

Mary-Ann Stephenson is Co-Director of the UK Women’s Budget Group

I have lived and worked in Birmingham all my adult life, the last 10 years almost exclusively providing affordable credit as an alternative to high cost credit, firstly running a credit union and then Fair for You.

It’s a generalisation but on the whole our customers are women, in lower income households, with some caring obligation and in part-time work.  ‘Managing mums’ is a term that has been coined in recent months. I would say these women are sassy, switched on, entrepreneurial, hard working, and not really managing very well at all. Or at least they are until something goes wrong when they need access to fair, affordable and well- designed credit.

I have sat in rooms over the last 10 years, hearing my customers talk about the need for financial education, budgeting and debt advice.  I felt strongly throughout those years that they need better alternatives to the credit options that are currently available.

In 2014, a group of us spent hours listening to mums of younger children in Northfield, Birmingham tell us very frankly and openly about their experience with high cost credit. I went in there thinking I knew what Fair for You would look like, and I came out knowing what it had to look like.

Some amazing people and organisations have backed our work over the last three years, but we never lost sight of what we were told, and we delivered what those people needed.

High cost credit isn’t just expensive – all versions of high cost credit have that in common. But the other common trait is that it is designed for the benefit of the lender, and to take maximum extraction from the customers’ financial household.

The term the ‘poverty premium’ is used to describe  the additional costs  low income households – in other words those who have less consumer power – have when purchasing essential goods and services. Whilst the amount of that premium fluctuates in various situations, it is always consistent that the lion’s share is made up of high cost credit i.e. the additional cost of using credit when faced with emergencies.  And the same households need credit when hit by emergencies, as they have less insulation and resilience to what to other people would be relatively minor emergencies.  There seems little point in measures to address poverty in the UK, without removing the poverty premium.

On 22 March we release the third social impact report relating to the work of Fair for You, a national challenger to high cost credit that directly responds to all of the needs we identified in our research. Now I don’t just have the voices of the mums who came to all of the sessions we ran, I have thousands of voices of customers whose financial situation has been changed because they have access to an alternative.  They prove every day, that they don’t need education and advice, they need better alternatives.

Fair for You is on line, available seven days a week, customer focused and a modern solution that uses multi-media communications including social media. Put simply, credit delivered with dignity and respect, designed to meet the lives of mums – and anyone else – who juggles, struggles and are not really managing at all.

And our customers love it – we are so proud to be rated among the highest financial services in the UK according to Trustpilot.

Please check us out and if you can support our work and our drive to change the way we lend to lower income households, then we would love to talk to you.

Angela Clements is the CEO  of Fair for You

Read Centre for Responsible Credit’s Social Impact Report

www.fairforyou.org.uk

www.fairforyou.co.uk

The Barrow Cadbury Trust is very pleased to be partnering with the Access Foundation for the delivery of the new Infrastructure Investment Fund.  With a fund of £1.8m over three years, the  investments and grants we make will strengthen existing infrastructure, bring new entrants into the sector and extend support to organisations that have not previously been able to access social finance.

The new fund is entirely focused on supporting infrastructure (by infrastructure we mean social investment intermediaries and support organisations, plus the shared processes, tools, networks and partnerships that enable best practice).  Our vision is, over the period of the fund, to facilitate the development of a strong, sustainable, collaborative community of support providers. We will be doing this in three ways:

• Making investments in existing infrastructure support agencies, for example to enable them to increase capacity, skill and effectiveness, grow their business or reach new markets, all in ways that increases their strength, resilience and sustainability.
• Extending the reach of the sector, by supporting new entrants (for example CVSs and other local support agencies) and exploring how support can be extended to geographic and sectoral “cold spots”. This element of the work is likely to take the form, initially, of small feasibility studies to explore provision of social investment support, or perhaps delivering a social investment funding programme.
• Thirdly, we will be looking to strengthen the sector by funding research, development and innovation. We expect to grant-fund or invest in a diverse portfolio which could include the development of new tools, standardised systems of data collection, awareness raising and communications, sharing best practice as well as projects to fill other gaps that become clear over the course of the programme.

Of course the availability of advice and support may not be the only factor preventing access to social finance, so there is scope to explore barriers and develop new solutions: blended finance, developing fresh thinking, developing shared tools and collective learning will go a long way towards accelerating change.

Access chose us to deliver this fund because of our expertise in sector infrastructure, our experience in social investment and our approach, which is to work in partnership with those we fund towards a common goal. Our model of working is to focus on a small number of policy areas, where we have deep knowledge, and try to influence decision-makers and practitioners by building an evidence base, advocating for change and ensuring that people affected by social injustices are heard by those in positions of power.  Those guiding principles will be used in developing and delivering the programme.

We expect to launch the new programme in the summer with a call for expressions of interest for a first round of investments.  The next few years will be an exciting time for all of us.

The new fund is entirely focused on supporting infrastructure (by infrastructure we mean social investment intermediaries and support organisations, plus the shared processes, tools, networks and partnerships that enable best practice).  Our vision is, over the period of the fund, to facilitate the development of a strong, sustainable, collaborative community of support providers. We will be doing this in three ways:

• Making investments in existing infrastructure support agencies, for example to enable them to increase capacity, skill and effectiveness, grow their business or reach new markets, all in ways that increases their strength, resilience and sustainability.
• Extending the reach of the sector, by supporting new entrants (for example CVSs and other local support agencies) and exploring how support can be extended to geographic and sectoral “cold spots”. This element of the work is likely to take the form, initially, of small feasibility studies to explore provision of social investment support, or perhaps delivering a social investment funding programme.
• Thirdly, we will be looking to strengthen the sector by funding research, development and innovation. We expect to grant-fund or invest in a diverse portfolio which could include the development of new tools, standardised systems of data collection, awareness raising and communications, sharing best practice as well as projects to fill other gaps that become clear over the course of the programme.

Of course the availability of advice and support may not be the only factor preventing access to social finance, so there is scope to explore barriers and develop new solutions: blended finance, developing fresh thinking, developing shared tools and collective learning will go a long way towards accelerating change.

Access chose us to deliver this fund because of our expertise in sector infrastructure, our experience in social investment and our approach, which is to work in partnership with those we fund towards a common goal. Our model of working is to focus on a small number of policy areas, where we have deep knowledge, and try to influence decision-makers and practitioners by building an evidence base, advocating for change and ensuring that people affected by social injustices are heard by those in positions of power.  Those guiding principles will be used in developing and delivering the programme.

We expect to launch the new programme in the summer with a call for expressions of interest for a first round of investments.  The next few years will be an exciting time for all of us.