Government Launch £2.7m Fund to Reduce Parental Conflict

Minister for Family Support, Housing and Child Maintenance, Justin Tomlinson announced today (4 January) that as part of the Reducing Parental Conflict Programme, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is launching a £2.7 million Challenge Fund that will provide grant funding to innovative projects, to gather learning on what works to reduce parental conflict.

The fund will be made up of two separate strands:

A Digital Support for Families strand: £1.6 million is available to provide grant funding to innovative projects that will test what works digitally to support and maintain engagement with disadvantaged families to reduce parental conflict.

A Support for Disadvantaged Families strand: A further £1.1 million is available to test what works to support disadvantaged families that are at greater risk of parental conflict, where there is limited existing evidence.

The key objective of the Challenge Fund is to build a broader evidence base of what works in reducing parental conflict. Evidence will inform future policy and practice and help local areas support a greater number of disadvantaged families at risk of parental conflict.

Eligible applicants could include local authorities; digital organisations; organisations from the public and private sector; voluntary and community organisations; and social enterprises.

Applicants must be based within the United Kingdom to submit applications to the Digital Support strand. Initiatives will be required to focus on an English audience although this support will be available to families living elsewhere within the United Kingdom.

Applicants and activity must be based in England for the Support for Disadvantaged Families strand.

Initiatives should be prepared to start in April 2019 and be fully delivered by March 2020.

From 11 January, applicants will be able to complete an online checklist before deciding if they wish to submit their initiative idea for an eligibility check. Eligibility checks will be accepted from 11 January until 8 February 2019. Initiative ideas that clearly do not meet the Fund criteria will not be allowed to proceed past this stage.

Organisations that have completed an eligibility check and have been invited to apply to the Fund will be able to access the online application portal between 21 January and 15 February 2019.

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