Our aim is to ensure every family in our school community has a safe place to meet for support and to provide a healthy meal or snack to combat the cost of living crisis.

We aim to promote health and wellbeing by running after school workshops for our families. The workshops will run over a 6 month period from January 2025 - June 2025. Each workshop will run for around an hour and a healthy snack or light meal will also be provided. 

We have collated responses from our parents and children which highlighted the following:

• parents want to feel more included in the school environment and with their child's learning
• children would like their parent/caregiver to have more involvement with their learning and for the learning to be ‘more fun’
• families would like to meet for support (from each other and from professionals)
• families would like to be more active
• children would like to learn how to cook healthy meals
• parents and children expressed an interest in attending a regular after-school club

We feel our plan for an after-school family hub would help meet the needs highlighted, we would be able to support family learning in a fun and engaging way. As well as providing a healthy snack or light meal, to help families during the current cost of living crisis.

We would work with the local community builder, the NHS, Local charities and Parent Council Volunteers to ensure a wide range of needs are met. Each ‘workshop’ at our new Family hub would have a theme, such as:

• Homework Help/ Supported Study (supporting family learning)
• Health and Wellbeing (promoting physical and mental wellbeing)

• Equality and Equity (outside agency delivering a workshop on this, with fun family games)
• Health and Fitness (physical games and activities for all ages and abilities)
• Cooking Healthy meals on a budget (community cook-a-long)
• Caring for our Community (community litter picks)

We would use the money secured from the bid to get our ‘Family Hub’ up and running.  Our predicted expenditure is £40 to buy equipment such as plates, cutlery and cooking utensils. Then a further £40 per session (for 24 sessions) to purchase the ingredients for the included healthy meal/snack.

As a result, community sessions have been developed through the season to include children and young people (40 taking part weekly) in which they have been very involved at games and lifted the league trophy with the team at the presentation. The club has provided a platform for Irvines first competitive basketball team and inspiring the next generation. 

We are applying for approximatley 50% of the cost of hall hire (£690 based on 2023-24 costs) for the upcoming season and referees costs (£310 based on 2023-24 costs however the referee fees have been increased for the new season). 

This would really help support our members by decreasing our membership fees during the current financial climate and support them to continue to take part in their sport and continue to increase their physical health and mental well-being.

Barnardo's Stronger Families provides support across North Ayrshire to Kinship families. We have funding in place for core staff to facilitate groups, sessions and activities however we require funding to provide for resources, refreshments and if we wish to work with local artists. We worked with local artists recently on graffiti projects and creative arts groups with young people and the feedback was overwhelmingly positive. Those young people recommended that other young people and adults get to experience groups/sessions similar to those that they took part in. Benefits of creative arts sessions are socialisation, reducing isolation, positive communication, learning new skills and discovering artisitic talents. It can build confdence and self-esteem. For Kinship carers it will allow them to take some time for themselves, relax, spend time with other people in a similar situation to them and to build up positive peer relationships and supportive networks. For Kinship families to take part in sessions together, it will allow them to spend quality time as a family, having fun, communicating, supporting each other and relaxing together. Barnardo's will provide the staffing and promotional materials for these sessions.

Costs for 10 sessions:

Venue hire - £150 (2 hours per session)

Refreshments - £100

Creative arts resources - £450

Local artist time - £300

An afternoon tea with entertainment would be provided for our senior citizen members. This would allow them to meet others and help with their wellbeing and cost of living.

£600 for food and drinks 

£100 for entertainment 

£50 for hire of hall

We would like funding to contribute towards the costs of running the club which helps young people and adults alike. For younger members, it takes them off the streets, teaches them how to look after their physcial and mental wellbeing. It also teaches them discipline and how to conduct themselves in the community. 

The club is open Monday to Friday and has a membership fee of £4 per session or £10 to attend 5 nights in one week. We would like to keep this cost as low as possible for families so it's accessible to young people, so by getting this funding will help us subsidise the costs. 

Taking part in the club helps improve members health and wellbeing through exercise and building relationships between members. The funding will also help towards the cost of living crisis for members as it will reduce the costs of taking part in this activity which is invaluable to members of the Vineburgh and Redburn neighbourhoods. 

Ring hire - £360 Insurance - £640

TOTAL - £1000

The Parents Wellbeing and Health Event will be open to parents of young children and will be inclusive of the following activities to promote physical and mental wellbeing; introduction to yoga and mindfulness, introduction to PT for mental health, havening session an how to increase the resilence of Parents and their Children. A breakdown of the costs below 

- introduction to yoga and milndfullness £250 

- Havening session £250 

- Intro to PT for mental health benifits £250 

- Resilence session £100

- Refreshments £100

- Hall hire £50

With the funding, we hope to host 2 networking events to attract members to join the community council. The community council works in partnership with several other voluntary organisations across Irvine such as Friends of Redburn, Fullarton Community Association, Marymass Festival Committee and others to run events in the locality and generally foster good relations between groups. By hosting these network meetings, we hope to attract new committee members who can increase our capacity to put on events and build community spirit between voluntary organisations.

The community council previously hosted the Irvine Yuletide event in 2023 which attracted around 10,000 people to Irvine moor. This gave families a chance to take part in free festive activities at a time of year when the cost of living hits hardest. If we can attract new volunteers to the community council, we will be able to put on more events similar to this, bringing people together and creating positive change in the community.

Costing as follows: 2 events 6 months apart

Rent of venue - £200

Promotion, including paid for advertising social media £100

Catering £700 (2 events, 70 people, £5 a head.)

TOTAL - £1000