Previous Awards:

Capital Funding
for Health and Care

Mind (2023)

Mind is the largest provider of community mental health support in England and Wales, and the Trust awarded £400,000 to support the scaling-up its Supported Self-Help programme. The programme is an early intervention service for people with low to moderate mental health needs who do not meet the threshold for NHS services or who would otherwise be allocated to a waiting list under the NICE ‘watchful waiting’ period. The service complies with the NICE guidance definition of ‘facilitated’ self-help and Mind presented strong evidence from previous pilots demonstrating the positive outcomes for participants who had sought support for a range of issues including depression, low mood, grief, stress, anxiety, and general wellbeing. The charity had secured substantial funding from the devolved government in Wales to develop the programme during the pandemic, and the Trust’s funding will support the roll-out of the programme to three areas in northern England with high levels of health inequality and unmet need.

Treetops Hospice Trust (2023)

Treetops provides end-of-life care and wellbeing support for adults with life-limiting illnesses and has established strong relationships with care homes in the surrounding area. The Trust awarded £100,000 to support the continued development of a virtual ward model of care, that will provide targeted training and clinical buddying for care home staff. The model aims to increase the confidence and competence of care home staff to identify changes in residents’ condition and to manage palliative care more effectively in coordination with local GPs, district nursing and frailty teams, social care services and other agencies. Treetops presented evidence from previous pilot studies and a roadmap for how the model would be developed and disseminated in partnership with other organisations within the health and care sectors. The model is an innovative and practical approach, which Treetops hope will develop into a model that others can follow.

Tommy’s (2022)

Research has highlighted concerns about the quality and variability of maternity services, and significant health inequalities in maternity care. Tommy’s is working with the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and the Royal College of Midwives to develop a medical device that can be used by maternity staff during routine antenatal appointments. The device uses AI-powered algorithms to increase the accuracy and sensitivity of risk assessments, and tools to support clinical decision-making in line with national guidelines. Following positive initial results, NHSX is funding a clinical trial of the device. In parallel with the trial, the Trust made an award of £250,000 to support the development of the next version of the device, including new modules covering perinatal and postnatal mental health, hypertensive disorders, and cardiovascular and diabetic health. Work will also include enhanced integration with other NHS systems.

Alder Hey Children’s Hospital Charity (2022)

Alder Hey is developing a new Surgical Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, in collaboration with Liverpool Women’s Hospital. The Unit will be the first of its kind in the UK and deliver a new model of Family Integrated Care, encouraging parent-baby interactions and actively supporting parents as primary care givers alongside clinical staff. The Trust made an award of £250,000 to support the development and integration of high resolution monitoring equipment for the Unit. The technology is an integral part of the new model of care and will allow “line of site monitoring” by clinical staff without interrupting parent-baby interactions. If successful, the model has the potential to transform neonatal practice in the UK.

The University of Strathclyde (2020)

The University’s Biomedical Rehabilitation Engineering Research Group is a leader in its field. Stroke is the primary cause of disability globally, and the Trust’s award of £449,000 will support the Group to establish a named Centre to expand and accelerate its existing work in stroke rehabilitation technology.  The Centre will enable the University to work with stroke survivors and clinicians to develop “advanced rehabilitation technologies to enable a model of rehabilitation at scale in which technology is used to enable people to drive and manage their own rehabilitation”.

Prevent Breast Cancer Limited (2021)

Based at the Nightingale Centre at the Wythenshaw Hospital in Manchester, an NHS service, the centre provides screening and treatment for breast cancer.  In partnership with Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust the centre has created the National Breast Imaging Academy in response to a critical shortage of specialist staff.  The Trust has awarded £350,000 to support the development of the Academy, which Is pioneering new training models and career paths to address regional and national skill shortages in breast imaging. The Academy will also undertake research and evaluate new techniques and equipment to enhance provision for patients.

WellChild (2019)

WellChild supports children and young people with complex healthcare needs and provides a range of services to support families to care for severely disabled children at home.   The charity was awarded a grant of £350,000 towards its Better@Home project, which aims to establish a number of training units around the UK to enable parents and carers to provide the often-complex nursing and medical care that their child may need.

The charity piloted the concept of training units in 2015, and is now creating a network of units around the UK; either based in hospitals or mobile units to deliver training at home.

The project is innovative in that it will provide facilities and services which do not currently exist in the NHS. Better@Home has the potential to: enhance parents’ ability to deal with emergencies at home; provide opportunities for parents to update or review their skills; provide training to other family members or carers so they can provide respite care, and; provide tailored training for families managing end-of-life care at home.

The Anna Freud Centre (2017)

A grant of £250,000 was awarded towards the building of a new Centre of Excellence campus to improve the understanding and treatment of mental health in children.

The charity is concerned about the under-provision of mental health services for children and young people in the UK – with less than 1 in 5 of patients able to access the help and support they require, and with treatment often being outdated. It is against this background that the charity embarked on a project to pioneer a radical approach by creating a new Centre of Excellence in Kings Cross.

The centre will provide a space for professionals in research, social care, practice and education, to collaborate their ideas and findings, in contrast to the current strategy of working in silos. The centre will also aim to involve children and their families in all areas of the charity’s work in order to create a general strategy for mental health treatment in the UK and to facilitate translational research.

The Children’s Trust (2020)

The Children’s Trust specialises in care of children with acquired brain injury and is a leader in the field “delivering outstanding child- and family-centred therapy, education and care”.  The Trust awarded £160,000 to The Children’s Trust to support the redevelopment of some of its buildings as part of a wider programme to enable the UK’s “first truly integrated, transdisciplinary care model for children with acquired brain injury and neurodisability”.

The Lake District Calvert Trust (2018)

Based near Keswick, this charity has provided a purpose-built accessible residential activity centre for disabled people for over 40 years.

The Lake District Calvert Trust were awarded a grant of £175,000 to support the development of a custom-built rehabilitation centre dedicated to supporting survivors of acquired brain injury (ABI).  This centre will be the first in the UK for interactive post rehabilitation following acute brain injury and will allow them to develop transformative care for survivors. The centre will provide long-term residential rehab, 5 day or weekend residential courses and day centre provision to the local community.

The project aims to provide intensive rehabilitation for 100 people each year with follow up support. Key outcomes for individuals include regaining social and economic independent, growth in self-esteem and averting mental health decline.

The Murray Parish Trust (2021)

Established in 2015 to The Murray Parish Trust supports Southampton Children’s Hospital with fundraising for the specialist equipment and facilities.  The Trust has awarded a grant of £165,000 to support the installation of an intra-operative MRI (iMRI) suite at the hospital, which will principally be used by the paediatric neurosurgery team. The facility will reduce the need to multiple procedures, improve outcomes for patients and reduce demands on paediatric ICU. When not in use by the neurosurgery team, the facility will provide capacity for ~3,000 additional scans for other paediatric and adult patients.

Royal Brompton and Harefield Hospitals Charity (2019)

National guidelines stipulate that cystic fibrosis (CF) patients should be seen in clinic every 10 weeks to manage and monitor their condition. The need to attend regular clinics imposes a real burden on patients and exposes them to the risk of cross-infection. As the number of adults living with CF increases, the current model of care also presents challenges for the NHS.

The Royal Brompton and Harefield Hospitals Charity was awarded a grant of £150,000 towards the Hospital’s Future Care project, which aims to integrate a number of existing technologies to develop virtual clinics for people with CF.  CF Future Care will provide self-assessment equipment and an app for patients to monitor their lung function, oxygen saturation and blood glucose remotely.  This will enable patients and clinicians to share data and thereby support: patients to better understand the underlying factors affecting their CF, giving them more autonomy to manage their condition; and care teams to co-ordinate care more effectively, as they will have a more detailed and continuous overview of a patient’s health.

The project is innovative in that it offers a method of monitoring patients’ health outside of hospital and has the potential to, provide a model for similar virtual clinics for patients with other chronic conditions.

Royal British Legion Industries (RBLI) (2018)

RBLI is a 100-year-old charity supporting approximately 300 disabled and elderly people, including, but not exclusively, military veterans, by enabling them to live independently at a unique village in Kent.

RBLI were awarded a grant of £175,000 to support phase two of ‘The Centenary Village’ project to expand the current service, enabling it to support more of the most complex cases.  The initiative also includes promoting the charity’s care model nationally and encouraging its replication by other agencies.

In Phase 1 of the project RBLI created 24 adapted apartments, 12 new care suites, and a Day Centre.  Phase 2 is to create 20 family homes with disability adaptions, 24 one and two-bedroom (fully accessible) apartments, 24 Assisted Living units, and a two-story Community Centre (including a Gym, training, and welfare services).

Wallace and Gromit’s Grand Appeal (2021)

Supporting Bristol Children’s Hospital and St Michael’s Neonatal Intensive Care Unit Wallace & Gromit’s Grand Appeal has raised funds for a range of projects including specialist equipment and improvement to facilities.  The Trust has awarded £85,000 to create a multi-functional ‘soft space’ within the hospital’s emergency department to support the growing number of young patients with mental health issues, learning difficulties, behavioural needs and disabilities. This will be the first space of its kind in the UK, and the clinical team will evaluate its use which, it is hoped, will provide the evidence for future expansion within the emergency department or the adoption of similar spaces in other settings.

Newcastle University (2018)

In order to manage more effectively the interaction with some patients (typically patients with long term conditions who visit the GP regularly), the NHS is now using Group Consultation models rather than the normal 10-15 minutes appointments with a GP. The objective is to achieve better outcomes for patients by facilitating peer support, empowerment, and education, whilst at the same time making life easier for clinicians, who are able to see more patients for longer. It also tends to reduce the number of regular appointments sought by the patient, making more efficient use of time available to the NHS.

Newcastle University under the leadership of Dr Fraser Birrell, who is Academic Lead for Shared Appointments UK, has played a leading role in developing the concept of Group Consultations in the UK. It now wishes to disseminate the model more widely across the NHS using a Virtual Learning and Development Hub which will support training and research in a UK-wide partnership of clinicians and researchers, enabling them to lead group care in their primary care or hospital settings.  The Trusts grant of £250,000 will provide the funding required to establish the Virtual Learning and Development Hub.

The project has the potential to make a significant difference to the NHS and its ability to care for those with long term illnesses or disabilities.