The Crisis and Resilience Fund replaces the Household Support Fund and provides £2.5m of grant funding to Torbay Council.

The money will offer support for people experiencing crisis and help work with them to prevent future crises.

A crisis can happen to anyone, and the fund aims to provide a safety net for people on low incomes who face financial crisis and need immediate support, including help with housing costs.

The fund puts greater emphasis on moving beyond short-term responses, by investing in preventative approaches.

A crisis can mean different things to different people but could include:

• Disasters - damage to, or loss of, possessions or property
• Accident, health emergency or mental health crisis
• Household relationship breakdown
• Breakage of an essential item
• Loss or theft of money
• Redundancy or other change in working pattern

In our plan, there is funding for services like food banks and more immediate cash support, but also for access to services to support resilience such as social supermarkets and key voluntary, community and social enterprise (VCSE) partners to help with advice, information and practical support.

This includes specific support for people with mental health challenges and those who need a bit of extra help to find employment.

The funding has been confirmed for three years, and during that time we will spend more of the grant on resilience support so that people avoid experiencing a crisis in the first place.

Cllr Alan Tyerman, Torbay’s Cabinet Member for Housing and Finance, said “We welcome this funding in encouraging people to work with our VCSE partners to get underneath what leads them to experience a crisis and put in place practical ways of preventing this happening again.

“We know that by helping people to improve their resilience we prevent them from experiencing future crisis and help them to plan for the future.”