Micro grant fund update Autumn 2025

Smaller sums, bigger impacts

Micro Grants have a maximum value of £999 but in reality awards can be for smaller amounts and still have a big impact.

For the period April – August 2025, 156 micro grants we approved micro grants totalling £43,408. The average micro grant = £278. This represents a 70% increase in successful micro grants when compared with the same period in 2024/25.

Ward 2, Glenrothes Hospital micro grant makes maximum impact in small space

Patients who are cared for in Ward 2 at Glenrothes Hospital are able to access the outdoors and benefit from fresh air in the ward’s very own garden area. However, the space itself, was previously somewhat bare and unloved. Determined to do something to change this, Senior Charge Nurse, Lorraine Hands and her team decided to apply for funding to improve the space.

Just £300 in the form of a micro grant was all that was required to fill the space with summer plants and provide outdoor seating. “Over the summer months the garden has been popular with patients and their visitors along with the ward team”, said Lorraine. The appearance of the garden has been transformed and it is now a welcoming place to sit and enjoy the fresh air and colourful planting.

It is hard being in hospital and I like to walk round the garden with the nurses. I enjoy sitting with my family and looking at the lovely plants.

Ward 2 Patient , Glenrothes Hospital

Toys and books bring comfort to children at most difficult time

Fife Specialist Palliative Care’s Children and Families Support Service provides psychosocial information, advice, support and counselling to patients and their partners and co-parents, children, stepchildren and young people facing parental death and bereavement.
This funding has enabled the service to improve the patient experience at end of life by increasing support for children and young people. This project also aims to reduce health inequalities by supporting approaches on early intervention. Early support towards pre-bereavement education support families to prepare for parental death.

The micro and small grants have provided:-

Memory boxes
Bereavement books
Cuddly toys

Both my children and my nephews have made use of the books that were provided, so that’s four children helped through one of life’s most difficult experiences. The presence of this service was also a big comfort to my husband, whose primary concern was always his children and the impact his death would have on them and me. The children have the big cuddly toys which they still sleep with and the little ones provided comfort to him in his last days when he became anxious and agitated.

Parent of a child helped by Fife Palliative Care Service

Surgical Pre-Assessment micro grant makes a white coat syndrome a thing of the past

Attending a pre-assessment clinic is a key step before undergoing general anaesthesia for a surgical procedure.

Usually, healthcare professionals will evaluate a patient’s fitness for anaesthesia and the surgery itself. Part of this evaluation will be the application of a blood pressure monitor onto the patient’s arm to get a correct reading. This helps the anaesthetist know how to prepare the patient for their up-and-coming surgery. If they have ‘white coat syndrome’ however, the reading will be unnaturally high and thus misleading, pointing perhaps to hypertension

A micro grant provide by Fife Health Charity is proving especially useful in getting round this issue. By providing ‘take home’ blood pressure monitoring cuffs, patients are now asked to undertake a period of self-monitoring in the comfort of their own home. This lowers, not only anxiety but the patients’ blood pressure readings.

At a cost of just £232, this new initiative is proving to reducing the need for patients to make appointments with their GP for further review and speeding up patient’s preparation for surgery. The monitoring is only required for a short time prior to surgery so that the cuffs can be used again and again to treat more patients.

Surgery and ‘white coat syndrome’

White coat syndrome is what can happen to patients when faced with an interaction with a doctor (traditionally someone of the medical professional, wearing a white coat). They experience nervousness, and that nervousness will quickly translate into a higher reading on the blood pressure monitor when applied.

The loan blood pressure cuffs have filtered out the number of patients confirming white coat hypertension and therefore don’t need any further input from their GP.

Corin Allan , Nurse Practitioner