Young people leaving care, older people with dementia and their carers will be the focus of a new £50m Big Lottery Fund in Scotland.

The £50m fund is the first area-specific fund to be unveiled since last December, when it was announced that BIG would invest £400m in Scotland between 2010 and 2015. The Scottish government met with BIG officials in Edinburgh yesterday to discuss the new fund.

First Minister Alex Salmond said that dementia is a priority for the government, and the announcement precedes the unveiling of a national dementia strategy next month. “Lottery funding decisions are taken independently of government, but the Scottish government has been working closely with the Big Lottery Fund to identify key issues distinctive to Scotland,” he said.

Alison Magee, chair of the Scotland Committee of BIG, said the fund marks a change in the lottery funder's strategy.

“While some previous grant funding programmes have been set up to address one single aspect of people’s lives at a time, we want to develop a new approach which looks at supporting all aspects of an individual’s life in one package; a person-centred approach over a much longer period of time which is committed to driving forward positive change in people’s circumstances,” she said.

A spokesman for BIG told Civil Society that it will be at least a year before details of the fund are released as the organisation is “still working out the mechanisms for how it’s going to happen”.

“It’ll be a while off,” he said.