The impact of support work provided by Energy Action Scotland has been captured in two short films now available to view online.

With funding secured from the private sector, the national fuel poverty charity provided support to some member organisations working on the ground to assist households who struggle to afford their fuel bills and to keep warm at home.

In the two-year project called the Warm and Healthy Homes Fund, Energy Action Scotland used £431,455 of funding to support work in three areas of Scotland where there were on-going initiatives to tackle health and fuel poverty in tandem. Energy Action Scotland worked with THAW in Orkney, Tighean Innse Gall in the Western Isles and Glasgow City Council.

The initiatives engaged with local services such as Care and Repair, CABx, housing associations and the local councils to establish a referral pathway for frontline workers from a range of health and social services including social work, occupational health and Macmillan Cancer Support. Tailored energy advice and advocacy, energy efficiency measures and help in accessing income maximisation, relevant grants and other local support mechanisms were offered.

Further support for people who were experiencing difficulty with keeping warm at home at a price they could afford due to cancer was the result of funding secured by Energy Action Scotland from SSE through the Industry Initiatives strand of the Warm Home Discount obligation.

In the Aiming Beyond Cancer project, Energy Action Scotland worked with Tighean Innse Gall in the Western Isles and with Shetland Islands Council to offer a layered level of support to people with an ‘active’ cancer diagnosis. It included a dedicated intervention home visit service and offered a range of energy efficiency measures. Partnerships were established to work with local agencies such as Macmillan Nursing Service, Macmillan Cancer Support, the NHS and CABx.

The measures provided were not available to these clients from mainstream programmes for a variety of reasons.

Norman Kerr, director of Energy Action Scotland, said: “We believe these projects demonstrate the impact that partnership working at a local level can have along with sufficient funding to avoid client contributions where people have restricted incomes and combined with the flexibility to tailor assistance to client needs.”

The two short videos can be viewed from the Projects page on the Energy Action Scotland website at Warm and Healthy Homes Fund and Aiming Beyond Cancer.