In 2017, through our four independent charitable Foundations, we helped more than 2,800 charities to do more to tackle disadvantage in England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and the Channel Islands.
These included Edinburgh’s Thistle Centre of Health and Wellbeing.
A Bank of Scotland Foundation grant of £70,000 is enabling the Thistle Centre to provide around 320 consultations for the next two years to individuals that need help managing long term health conditions.
This face to face support is allowing those people to stay connected and manage their health condition, through Lifestyle Management activities and exercise classes, including volunteer led activities such as Tai Chi and through the use of a gym with adapted equipment.
So far for us the grant has meant we have been able to offer 145 new people an initial appointment with a practitioner so that they can begin to explore self-management and helping them to feel more in control over managing their health. It has also meant we have been able to continue to offer a range of self-management supports including our ten week lifestyle course while also exploring new options for supporting people to self-manage.
Cathrin Griffiths, Health and Wellbeing Manager, Thistle Foundation
In 2017, through our independent charitable Foundations, we helped more than 2,800 charities to tackle disadvantage in England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and the Channel Islands. Our contribution enables the Foundations to make grants to local, regional and national charities – most of which focus on supporting disadvantaged people during key transitions in their lives.
As part of our Helping Britain Prosper Plan we have set a target to support 7,500 charities by 2020 to help them tackle social disadvantage across the UK.
The Helping Britain Prosper Plan was launched in 2014 and unites our Group and our colleagues to meet targets to address core socio-economic issues facing the UK.
We believe we can use our scale and reach to help people, businesses and communities to prosper, because we know that when Britain prospers, we can too.
You can find out more about the targets we have here.
You can find out how the Bank of Scotland Foundation is helping Scotland prosper online www.bankofscotlandfoundation.org
