Big Lottery Fund has named the final two of 12 applicants bidding for £10m investment as part of its Multiple and Complex Needs programme.

A Manchester-based partnership led by housing charity Shelter and a west Yorkshire partnership led by Developing Initiatives for Support in the Community (Disc) have received an initial £50,000 and £160,000 respectively, in order to help them work on their business plans to each be in with a chance of receiving £10m of funding.

BIG has set up the Multiple and Complex Needs programme to regionally support people with multiple problems like homelessness, mental ill health, addiction and reoffending.

Shelter’s project’s goal is to help people towards a better life by supporting them to find stable accommodation, improve their mental health, spend less time in prison and reduce their drug abuse. Disc wishes to improve and better coordinate services to tackle the needs of people living chaotic lives, particularly drug abusers.

A spokeswoman for BIG told civilsociety.co.uk that exactly how many of the twelve applicants will be awarded £10m is undecided, and that the development grants were necessary since the funding on offer is so large.

The spokeswoman added that the projects bring together agencies across in the voluntary, statutory and private sectors, and that the successful applicants are due to be announced in autumn.

Each project that is chosem will be monitored by BIG across an eight-year investment period “to create a blueprint of more effective and efficient ways of organising and delivering services”.

Alison Rowe, BIG’s head of communications England, added: “There are countless statistics demonstrating a need to help people with multiple and complex needs – for example the NHS Confederation found that 70 per cent of prisoners suffer from a mental illness and a substance abuse problem.

“Imagine a world where service delivery gives individuals the power to turn their lives around – our ultimate goal is to use the learning gleaned from this investment to shift policy thinking so that individuals become assets rather than just a drain on society.”

Details of the previous ten applicants can be found on BIG’s website here.

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