By 2022, we will provide 150,000 grants and services a year to families across the UK Family Fund Strategy 2017-2022 #help150000 Company Registration No. 3166627 Registered Charity No. 1053866 Scottish Charity No. SCO40810 www.familyfund.org.uk
By 2022, we will provide 150,000 grants and services a year to families across the UK
Family Fund Strategy 2017-2022 Here is how we re going to do it. To achieve our ambitions to support families raising disabled or seriously ill children across the UK, by 2022 we will Transform our support Continue to provide practical financial support that is meaningful and led by the family s choice that supports their real and immediate need. Meet the wider support needs of families, ensuring all families are offered information, advice and support alongside their grant application. Keep developing our application processes and methods of information provision so they are as accessible as possible (across online, paper, telephone and third party referral) and reflect families preference and availability. Make families voices heard Introduce new ways for families to have a greater say in Family Fund direction and policy. Provide ways for parents, carers, children and young people and their families to share their experiences and influence others. Secure our future Strengthen our financial position by increasing the diversity of our funding sources. Provide increased funding for grants and services for families in all four UK countries. Increase gifted profits from our trading subsidiary. Reach out across the UK Significantly expand our network of families, professionals and supporters to ensure we are known across the UK as an organisation that improves the wellbeing of disabled and seriously ill children and young people. Produce evidence of how our work delivers solutions, improves outcomes for families and enables positive change in every UK country. We were fortunate enough to be able to apply for a holiday each year, which has given Christopher the opportunity to have a family holiday we wouldn t be able to afford normally. I m a single parent, so funds are limited, but the grants have given Christopher the opportunity to have a break with either me or with his mum, and to enjoy the same things that other kids get to enjoy I don t feel that there s really enough support available for people with additional needs, so people like Family Fund have been an invaluable help. 1
Family Fund exists to improve the lives of disabled or seriously ill children, young people and their families. Through our grant making, we provide practical support helping families improve the quality of their daily lives, easing the pressures they face and improving their wellbeing. We have been doing this for 44 years, working in partnership with families to bring positive change. Much has changed since 1973, but many of the challenges that families talk to us about remain the same how the additional costs of raising a disabled child or young person can put a terrific strain on day-to-day life, how isolating disability can be and how hard it is to access statutory services. These are just a few of the recurring challenges that families tell us about. These challenges for families are, ultimately, challenges for us. Challenges that remind us that, despite the growth in the support we provide, there is still much more that we need to do and solutions we need to find. Challenges for which we must prepare ourselves to help families face - for as long as we are needed. So, we will carry on working together with families, providing not only the practical support that families expect and value from us, but looking at ways in which our support can help tackle the barriers that continue to exist for disabled children, young people and their families. This means we must look beyond the immediate horizon of what families need now, to the next five years and what families may need then. Five years which will inevitably be difficult as demand for our support rises, and the resources that we need to meet it are unlikely to increase at the same rate organically. So, to succeed we need to be ambitious, innovative and able to offer solutions. To succeed we need to be ambitious, innovative and able to offer solutions. The population of officially recorded families with disabled children has grown enormously. This is due to a range of factors including improved diagnosis, improved medical care and a broader understanding of disability. This also means that there is an increasing number of families caring for disabled children who are living in poverty or on lower incomes. Families who need our support. Over the next five years we intend to reach more families who need financial support through our grant making, and be more be responsive to the wider needs of families by providing improved information and guidance. We will continue to create solutions to the challenges faced by our families, and nurture and grow partnerships with others for the benefit of all families raising disabled or seriously ill children and young people. We will invest more in research and using our knowledge, sourced from the voice and experiences of families, to instigate change. We will seek further opportunities to raise awareness of what we do, raising more funding in a responsible manner to enable us to realise our ambitions and provide more support. Families remain at our heart everything we do now and in the future will always be about providing better outcomes and improving lives. We are driven by the voices of families and what they tell us is important. Whatever the next five years may bring, we believe we can use our knowledge, expertise and resources to help more families, giving them the support that they need, working towards a future where all families raising disabled children and young people have the same opportunities as others. 2
Family Fund Strategy 2017-2022 Over the next five years we want to build on our achievements, and support more disabled or seriously ill children, young people and their families than ever before. We want to continue to provide practical help in response to what families tell us they need, and support them to overcome some of the barriers that they face and bring about positive change. We want to be ambitious and bold about what we can achieve. By 2022, we will provide 150,000 grants and services to children, young people and their families across the UK each year. To do this we to need to be clear on how we will achieve our ambition. So we are committing to four aims that we believe will help us to do just that: Over the next five years we will: 1. Transform our support 3. Make voices heard By 2022 we will not only provide practical financial help, but will also be meeting wider needs in terms of information and support. These needs will be articulated by our families and met directly by Family Fund or through appropriately sourced expertise. By 2022 we want to be the go to organisation for those who wish to understand the reality of life for families living on lower incomes, raising disabled or seriously ill children and young people. 2. Reach out across the UK 4. Secure our future By 2022 we want to be better known by families, professionals and supporters, as an organisation that improves the wellbeing of disabled and seriously ill children and young people through delivering solutions and enabling positive change. By 2022 we will have strengthened our financial position and diversified our funding to deliver our ambitions. 3
Our aims will change us, but for the better. We will continue to be effective and efficient in the delivery of our work, ensuring as much funding as possible goes to support families. But we will need to do some things differently: We will need to innovate, embrace, and implement best practice around digital technology so that it enables us to improve our support and deliver our aims by 2022. We need to focus more on the real impact of our work and the difference our support makes to disabled and seriously ill children, young people and their wider families. Only by demonstrating the evidence of our impact will we drive change for our families. So we will measure this and learn from what we find, as we aim to continuously improve. We need to recognise more fully that our incredible team is pivotal to making this happen, and that their recognition, development and progression will support us in delivering our ambitions. I hope to look back in five years and know that every new aspect of support developed was driven by a need a family told us about, and that every pound of funding to deliver the support, was raised thanks to the power of our families voices. We can, and will, do more. Cheryl Ward, Chief Executive, Family Fund When Arianna was younger, she spent five years in a specialist autism unit, as she was finding it really difficult to cope with mainstream school. She finds it hard to make friends and can be quite aggressive when she feels frustrated. When she has meltdowns, it s really distressing and especially now she s older, they can be hard to deal with. I ve always been determined that I ll do the best for her, I want her to experience different things. Some days are really tough, but the grants we ve had from Family Fund have really helped. In the past, we ve applied for materials to decorate Arianna s bedroom, which was great, and she s also had an ipad which was brilliant. Having the technology has really helped her catch up with her education and to enjoy success at school. 4
Family Fund Strategy 2017-2022 make families voices heard create positive change We help provide practical support reach out to communities create solutions for families raise awareness of childhood disabilities break down barriers improve quality of life provide the opportunities that all families should have improve families wellbeing 7
Our mission is to provide items and services to all low-income families in the UK raising disabled or seriously ill children, that they could not otherwise afford or access, and that help improve their quality of life, realise their rights, and remove some of the barriers they face. We respond to families who need financial support by providing essential items such as furniture, white goods, short breaks, computers and digital devices, clothing and bedding, helping with the additional support needs of the family and their disabled child. These grants help break down many of the barriers families face, improving their quality of life and easing the additional daily pressures. We enhance the value of these grants by providing tailored information, advice and support services to ensure families are better equipped to support their disabled or seriously ill child or young person and themselves. This is who we are. This is what we do. Strategic aim 1 Transform our support All families have aspirations, but for many, especially those who are living on lower incomes, the challenges they face on a daily basis are very real. We want to provide practical financial support and be responsive to need by providing information and signposting to other sources of help.. We believe this will ease some of the pressures faced, and will provide support to parents and carers so they can achieve their aspirations for their children and young people. Transform our support: Continue to provide practical financial support that is meaningful, led by the family s choice, and supports their real and immediate need. Meet the wider support needs of families, ensuring all families are offered information, advice and support alongside their grant application. Keep developing our application processes and methods of information provision so they are as accessible as possible (across online, paper, telephone and third party referral) and reflect families preference and availability. This means: Develop new services to support and enhance our grants, in response to families need. Improving signposting to information, advice and support opportunities at all points of contact with families. Further expanding our online and offline resources, to reflect the areas of need that families highlight to us, including sleep issues, support for siblings and digital skills. Family Fund have understood that it isn t always easy to ask for help. They never made us feel like we had failed to provide things, instead they understand that children like ours tend to need more things to help them in life, which come at a massive cost. I m sure a majority of parents like us feel like life can be a constant battle with other people, but Family Fund have shown that it s not always this way a little bit of kindness has gone a long way! 6
Family Fund Strategy 2017-2022 We will increase the number of grants and services provided to UK families from 89,423 150,000 to in 2015/16 in 2021/22 Strategic aim 2 Reach out across the UK We will improve our outreach work to be more widely known to the increasing number of parents and carers who are living on lower incomes and need support caring for their disabled or seriously ill child or young person. We want the incredible teams of professionals across the UK, who provide vital support to families, to talk about us. We will help supporters who believe, as we do, that families living on lower incomes should have the same opportunities as others, to come together to help us to improve the wellbeing of disabled children and young people. Reach out across the UK: Significantly expand our network of families, professionals and supporters to ensure we are known across the UK as an organisation that improves the wellbeing of disabled and seriously ill children and young people. Produce evidence of how our work delivers solutions, improves outcomes for families and enables positive change in every UK country. This means: Looking at how volunteers can support us to deliver our aims, including the development of parent ambassadors. Expand our referral network in all four UK countries. Expanding our audience through development of our digital channels to allow families to contact us and access our services in as accessible a manner as possible. Since we introduced the sensory toys and lights into his room, he s been in there every single day, the lights are now part of his bedtime routine. After his bedtime story I leave the main light off so he can watch all the sensory lights his favourite part is the solar system lamp, which is amazing, but the jellyfish and the moon are fantastic too. They help him to relax and feel safe, and often he s asleep after ten minutes! Without the grant we would still be at square one, not sleeping and ripping our hair out, so to speak. We are immensely grateful to Family Fund for the grant. The lady that came to visit us was so lovely, even though Harrison can be afraid of strange visitors. I really am so glad that my friend told me about Family Fund, the difference it s made has just been incredible. There are an estimated 800,000 disabled children in the UK. 7
Application 22.8% ( from 69,221 to 85,027) numbers rose by between 2011/12 and 2015/16 across the UK. Strategic aim 3 Make voices heard To create better outcomes for disabled or seriously ill children and young people we to need to first listen, and then amplify, the voices of the families we support. This means introducing new ways to provide opportunities for families not just to share their voice with the public, but to influence our own work and developments. Part of this must include making more of the large and rich source of information we hold on the needs and experiences of a diverse and amazing range of families. We make some use of this information, but we want to ensure that others can use this data to improve support for families too, for example, as part of academic or policy research. Our aim should be to become the go to organisation for providing detailed qualitative and quantitative information on families raising disabled or seriously ill children and the issues they face. Make families voices heard: Introduce new ways for families to have a greater say in Family Fund direction and policy. Provide ways for parents, carers, children and young people and their families to share their experiences and influence others. This means: Developing new mechanisms for families inputting into our policy and service development. Improving the platforms we provide to families to share their experience and insight and improve the dissemination and profile of these stories and statistics. Producing annual research reports from our family cohort. There are things that Bethany can t do and places she can t go because she gets tired or frustrated, which means we spend a lot of time at home. We applied for the Lazy Spa because it was something we could use together as a family at home. Bethany really benefits from using the hydrotherapy pool at her school, but she often can t take part as she gets a lot of infections, so we thought a Lazy Spa at home would be great for her. Bethany absolutely loves being in the Lazy Spa. We re using it to do a lot of her therapies, it really helps to loosen her limbs up. We can t take her into a regular swimming pool because she has a heart condition, but because the Lazy Spa is nice and warm we can get a lot of therapy done, and she just thinks it s brilliant. 8 Without the grant from Family Fund, we wouldn t have been able to get a Lazy Spa for Bethany, which would be such a shame. She misses out on using the pool at school because of infection, so it s really great that we have a space at home now which we can use for her hydrotherapy. The help that Family Fund has given us has just been amazing.
Our trading subsidiary, Family Fund Business Services, has generated 2.1 million in gifted profits since its launch. Strategic aim 4 - Secure our future We need to continue to be there for families, and that means looking at how we grow our grant funding and remain a trusted partner for those who support disabled children, young people and families living on lower incomes. We can only realise some of our aspirations through the sourcing of unrestricted funding. This will help us deliver our priorities and the solutions that families tell us they need. We want to grow that funding and embed this in our work within the charity and our trading subsidiary, to help us deliver more for families. Secure our future: Strengthen our financial position by increasing the diversity of our funding sources. Provide increased funding for grants and services for families in all four UK countries. Increase gifted profits from our trading subsidiary. This means: Expanding our fundraising team to cover more potential income sources. Raising the profile and awareness of Family Fund Business Services unique fulfilment and grant-making system. Continuing to show value for money and impact. Maks used to be nervous when going on trips to different places, but now loves it when we take him on day trips. On holiday, he couldn t hide his emotions and he was so happy; this family break had an amazing impact on his behaviour and relationship with his sister. It has also helped develop his communication and social skills. Without you guys, we wouldn t have been able to afford it. We applied to go on a break again later this year, and he became excited about his next holiday when the card came through the door. 9
Our purpose is to improve the lives of low-income families raising disabled or seriously ill children and young people. Our mission is to provide items and services to all low-income families in the UK raising disabled or seriously ill children, that they could not otherwise afford or access, and that help improve their quality of life, realise their rights, and remove some of the barriers they face. Our vision is that all families raising disabled or seriously ill children have the same choices, quality of life, opportunities and aspirations as other families. find us: Family Fund, 4 Alpha Court Monks Cross Drive Huntington York YO32 9WN talk to us: Telephone: 01904 550055 Fax: 01904 652625 Email: info@familyfund.org.uk online: www.familyfund.org.uk community: facebook.com/familyfund @familyfund The Family Fund Trust for Families with Severely Disabled Children. Private company limited by guarantee. Incorporated in England and Wales. Registration no. 3166627. Registered charity no. 1053866. Scottish charity no. SC040810. Registered office: Unit 4, Alpha Court, Monks Cross Drive, Huntington, York YO32 9WN. www.familyfund.org.uk