We support evidence-based, trauma-informed interventions designed to overcome and prevent the trauma of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs). This programme works on several levels, supporting both children and young people affected by ACEs, as well as supporting parents to help break the cycle of trauma across generations.

We seek to provide flexible funding and therefore can support only those organisations whose work is fully aligned with our stated funding priorities. All services delivered by the charity must fall entirely within one of the eligible categories listed below.

Please note that we cannot consider applications in which only part of an organisation’s work fits our priorities.

In the Mental Health programme, our two areas of support are:

1) Support for children and young people

Under this focus, we wish to partner with charities that solely support children and young people who have suffered one or more ACEs, and they do so through evidence-based, trauma-informed therapies.

We only support charities that have a specialist, single focus on one or more of the following:

• Childhood sexual abuse
• Living in a household where there is domestic violence, and/or physical and/or emotional neglect
• Living with a parent who has a mental illness and/or substance abuse
• Bereavement and complex loss, including children and young people bereaved by suicide, murder, manslaughter, substance addiction,  or who have a parent in prison.

Eligibility in the Children and Young People category is limited to charities with a children first approach. This means charities that work primarily with children and young people affected by ACEs. 

We prioritise charities that provide recovery programmes for specific ACEs but we don’t exclude charities that support children with multiple ACEs. 

Further, while we understand that parents / guardians are part of the recovery journey, our aim is to fund organisations whose central focus is supporting the child or young person first, with parental / guardian involvement as an added element.

2) Support for parents

In England alone, nearly half (48%) of adults have experienced at least one ACE. Around 9% of the population have experienced four or more ACEs. While ACEs are prevalent in any socio-economic group, they are 10 times more prevalent among the 20% least privileged in our society.

We know that many adults only begin to face their own ACEs when they become parents, making this a crucial time for support.

Under this focus, we wish to partner with specialist charities that solely focus on supporting parents and complex family challenges by delivering:

• Evidence-based, whole-family, trauma-informed programmes that help parents to confront their own ACEs and help to break the intergenerational cycle of trauma and abuse.
• Evidence-based, whole-family, trauma-informed programmes for families where a parent or caregiver has a mental illness or substance addiction and is at risk of harming their children.

Eligibility under the Parents category is limited to charities whose central focus is delivering dedicated programmes to help prevent ACEs affected parents from harming to their own children.

Please note that, in this category, we only consider charities with a focus on parents. 

We do not support charities that help adults with ACEs, mental illness, substance addiction, etc., but who are not parents. 

For instance, charities supporting adult survivors of domestic abuse or women’s aid type charities are not eligible if their services are open to all adults, not exclusively to parents.