The eight Accelerating Ideas grantees shared £5.48 million in funding from the National Lottery Community Fund to help develop and scale their innovation. They received intensive support from Nesta, who acted as a coach and critical friend, and became part of a cohort who met regularly to share experiences and learning. In addition, the programme offered non-financial support from a panel of experts in fields including communications, research and business planning.

The programme focused on four key areas of innovation:

1. Neighbourhood networks Strong inter-generational friendships at the street and neighbourhood level can make a significant difference to older people’s lives – enabling them to feel supported and safe, enabling them to connect, have fun and give back to others and addressing low-level needs such as shopping or fixing something at home (eg, Cares Family, GoodGym).
2. Volunteers to support older people Local volunteers, including older volunteers, can make a great deal of difference to older people. High-quality, structured volunteering schemes can train volunteers to respond at a time of particular need or at a point of transition, such as bereavement or leaving hospital (eg, British Red Cross’ First Call, GoodSAM). Many of the volunteers are older people themselves.
3. Connecting people to make a difference Very significant and deep levels of voluntary connections and mutual support can be created with the right approach. These relationships can be transformational and prove that connecting people together can be life-changing (eg, Shared Lives for older people).
4. Peer support to manage day to day Older people are living with more long-term conditions, so managing their health on a day-to-day basis is a real concern of older people and their carers. Peer support groups connect older people who share similar experiences and enable them to provide one another with valuable social and emotional support (eg, British Lung Foundation’s Integrated Breathe Easy, Carers UK’s National Volunteering Programme or Stroke Association’s Hand in Hand).

Meet the Innovators: Five years on

In 2021, each of the Accelerating Ideas grantees has expanded the reach of their activities, progressed towards long-term sustainability, and worked to influence the wider health and care system.

It should be noted that Covid-19 has affected the innovations in different ways. Some had greater demand than ever before, some had to pause much of their activity at the height of lockdowns, and others pivoted to digital.

You can read more about each of their stories below.

Learning from Accelerating Ideas

Accelerating Ideas represented a new approach to funding for Nesta and the National Lottery Community Fund, with a flexible and long-term commitment to supporting scale and impact. This success was based on four key pillars:

• Supporting innovations to scale in different ways. We have worked closely with the Accelerating Ideas cohort and eight other Nesta grantees to publish Nurturing the seeds of change, which captures their experience and insights from scaling people-powered health and care innovations.
• Knowledge and learning. Nesta wanted to build an evidence base across each of the four key themes, particularly focusing on how these interventions impact on people, communities and on the wider sector. Key to this was finding the right approach to impact measurement for each innovation. Many of the organisations partnered with universities or research agencies to complete more robust evaluations on their behalf and this was encouraged and funded throughout the programme.
• Fostering a network. From the outset there was a strong emphasis on encouraging the organisations to learn from each other and to work together. This has also resulted in practical collaboration, such as the partnership between British Red Cross and GoodGym, which thrived during the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Amplify their work to help influence the system. It had always been a wider programme ambition to advocate for and create demand for more people-led health and care innovations rather than just scaling the handful of high potential innovations through the fund. Nesta used its resources and networks to amplify the innovators’ voices, building bridges between policymakers, commissioners and frontline innovators.