RELIEF OF SICKNESS

The main focus of The Foundation is the direct relief of human sickness. As this is our core objective, we tend to make more awards in this category than in our other programme areas.

Please note that, if your Relief of Sickness project is being delivered outside the UK, you need to apply under our International funding programme.

Awards in this category vary greatly in focus and they tend to be projects that do not fit into our other categories of Health Education or Palliative Care.

We consider projects in support of both physical and mental health.

Services and projects we have supported include:

Condition specific patient information resources.

Healthcare professional-led condition specific helplines.

Salaries for teams working directly with patients (e.g. nurses, doctors, and other healthcare practitioners).

Specialist nurse-led advice and support for children and adults living a chronic or life-limiting condition.

Air ambulance services.

Mobile units to provide statutory treatment closer to home or to communities particularly affected by health inequalities.

Our mental health funding is focused on charities that support:

individuals affected by severe and enduring mental health conditions and neurodevelopmental disorders including autism, OCD, severe depression (including suicidal thoughts, post-partum depression/psychosis), eating disorders, self-harm, substance misuse addiction.

individuals who are dealing with bereavement (children and parents of children and young people).

individuals who have suffered trauma and abuse (domestic abuse and violence, sexual abuse of children, young people and adults).

Our mental health funding is for charities with a specialist and sole focus on supporting individuals in the categories above. We do not support charities that provide general mental health services for a wide variety of needs, even if some of their clients may fall into any of these categories.

Are we a good fit for each other?

We don't currently set budgets for our Relief of Sickness, Health Education, and Palliative Care funding programmes, and, as a percentage of grants made, our funding allocation mirrors the number of applications received for each programme. Inevitably, we receive many more requests than we can afford to support.

To avoid wasting charities' time and resources, we have reintroduced a two-stage application process starting with an Expression of Interest (250 words max.), and we are working towards inviting to Full Application stage only applicants that have at least a 75% chance of being awarded a grant.

We are continuously updating our guidance for applicants to make it as clear as possible (please also visit our What we don't fund page).

We also want to share some key elements of our assessment process for this funding programme which we hope will help you determine whether your organisation or funding request are a good fit for The Foundation:

We prioritise charities that, regardless of their size, are meeting an otherwise unmet need, are well run, are experts in their field, have a clear strategy and the skills to support their beneficiaries, can point to a proven track record of positive impact, and are financially viable.

One of the key elements of our assessment is avoiding duplication of effort. If there are other UK charities – especially larger, national charities – which are providing very similar services to yours, we will prioritise your charity only if it is clearly adding to that existing provision (rather than duplicating it on a local level). We find this clarification to be particularly useful in sectors where many charities exist (cancer charities, for instance).

We contribute to services delivered by specialist professionals. We are unlikely to support services delivered by volunteers.

Given the high level of demand we continue to receive, we regret that we are not able to prioritise organisations run by volunteers.

We support ongoing service delivery.

We support funding requests for new initiatives only where the charity can evidence why and how it has identified the need for a new service, and it has the skills and expertise to deliver it.

Wherever possible or relevant, we prioritise charities that are PIF members and / or PIF Tick accredited members, if providing condition-specific information is central to their services.

Wherever possible or relevant, we prioritise helplines that are either Members of the Helplines Partnership or have achieved Helplines Standard certification.

Given the level of demand we face, we might not always be able to prioritise translations of condition-specific resources into different languages.

If a charity receives more than 90% in statutory funding, we may not be able to prioritise it if other applicants (in the same grant round or not) are charities providing similar services (albeit in other parts of the country) and which receive either much less statutory funding, or none at all.

In this funding programme, we prioritise direct healthcare delivery (e.g. therapies, assistance aids, or specialist mental health support).

This funding programme can overlap with the Health Education programme, so we advise you to check both pages to decide which programme is best suited to your organisation / funding request.

We hope the above is helpful. It is not an exhaustive list of our assessment process. This is still a work in progress as The Foundation continues reviewing its approach to funding, and we aim to add more to this list over the coming months. Meanwhile, we are available to answer your questions, so get in touch if you are not sure about the eligibility of your organisation or funding request.

HOW TO APPLY

Previous Grants

Since 2005, we have awarded over £3.6 million through this funding programme. Here are some examples of recent grants made in this category:

Footsteps Foundation

The Footsteps Centre in Dorchester on Thames, Oxfordshire provides intensive physical therapy for babies and children up to the age of 18 who are affected by a number of conditions including cerebral palsy and neurological disorders. They use a range of techniques to respond to the physiological needs of each child. The Footsteps Foundation was set up to ensure that no child is excluded from this support through lack of funds. The project funds between 20% and 80% of therapy costs depending on household income, without this support 60% of families who use the centre would find the costs prohibitive. The James Tudor Foundation has given 5 grants towards this service since 2011.

Aspire

Aspire is a national charity providing practical help to those who have been paralysed by a spinal cord injury. There are an estimated 50,000 people living with a spinal cord injury in the UK and Aspire supports these people to live independent lives through helping them to access to accessible housing and assistive technology as well as providing advice and support around welfare benefits and independent living. The James Tudor Foundation have been funding various aspects of Aspire's work since 2007, most recently funding an independent living advisor (ILA) who provides additional information and support for newly injured people. All ILAs have themselves suffered a spinal cord injury and so are able to draw on their lived experiences to support those who are adjusting to life after their injury.

Read about our funding programmes here: