Additional £100,000 funding available for families in Wales with sick or disabled children
Melanie May | 20 September 2017 | News
Family Fund has announced an additional £100,000 of funding for grants for families on low incomes raising disabled or seriously ill children in Wales.
Families will be able to apply for grants for essential items that help meet the needs of their children, such as washing machines or other white goods, or household items such as beds.
The £100,000 has been provided by the Garfield Weston Foundation to support Family Fund to make grants to over 200 more families in Wales who have recently been unable to receive support due to reductions in funding. This is in addition to the 875 families it currently expects to support in 2017/18. Family Fund has contributed £10,000 in donated income alongside the grant of £100,000 provided by Garfield Weston Foundation.
Cheryl Ward, Chief Executive of Family Fund, said:
“This grant of £100,000 is a welcome addition from Garfield Weston and evidences the need to support families across Wales. Recent changes to funding in Wales have meant that Family Fund has been unable to help the number of families it has previously, with families only able to seek support once every three years, instead of annually if they need to. Garfield Weston’s generous donation means that we can now reach back out to more than 200 of these families and provide essential support that many thought they would have to go without.”
Family Fund is the largest UK charity providing grants to families on low incomes raising disabled or seriously ill children and provided 88,119 grants or services worth over £33 million to families across the UK last year, including 1,686 grants to families in Wales. Family Fund received a grant of £500,000 from Welsh Government in 2017/18, a reduction of £2 million from the amount it had received until 2016/17 of £2.5 million a year.
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About Melanie May
Melanie May is a journalist and copywriter specialising in writing both for and about the charity and marketing services sectors since 2001. She can be reached via thepurplepim.com.