An update on our upcoming funds
A newborn arrives into a home already under pressure. A school-excluded teenager on the eve of their eighteenth birthday has nowhere to go and no one to turn to. A teenager with a learning disability reaches the end of school with no real sense of what comes next. A young man whose background makes him more likely to be stopped, charged, and convicted moves through a justice system that wasn’t designed to help. A young LGBT+ person turns to a homelessness service for help and finds they aren’t safe there.
These are turning points. What happens next can shape a life for years.
Too often, support arrives late, or not at all. Services aren’t designed for the people who need them most. Responsibility passes between teams. People don’t ask for help earlier because they don’t believe it’s safe to ask. By then, the crisis has already arrived. That doesn’t have to be the pattern.
This spring and summer, we’re opening five new funds. They address different people at different moments. But each one starts from the same belief: the moment someone gets the right support shapes everything that follows.
Core Memories
Since 2010, youth services have been cut by 76–80% in some parts of England. What’s left can only respond when crisis arrives. But the young people who face the sharpest disadvantage rarely need a crisis service first. They need a trusted adult. A youth worker who knows your name. Access to sport, arts, community. A place where you belong before things fall apart. Core Memories funds grassroots youth organisations doing exactly that work, in the places where it’s needed most. For a young person who has never had that, it changes the pattern entirely. This fund is closed to direct applications and delivered through YPF Trust.
Proud Homes
Opens on 6th May. Around one in four young people experiencing homelessness in the UK identifies as LGBT+. Most of them encounter a generalist service first: a hostel, a housing team, an outreach worker. Those encounters can be unsafe or dismissive: places where a young person cannot see themselves reflected, cannot trust that they’ll be heard. Proud Homes will fund up to six generalist homelessness organisations to improve how they assess, place, and support LGBT+ young people. It will also fund up to two organisations already showing strong inclusive work. Not one-off training. A new intake process. A trained keyworker. A service where a young person can walk through the door and feel safe. A young person who feels safe in a service stays in it.
Early Years Parenting
Opens in early June. For children in the most deprived parts of the UK, or in Black, Pakistani, or Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities, the gap in early development is significant, long-standing, and avoidable. Evidence shows that families engage with parenting support when they trust it: when it reflects their lives rather than judging them. We’ll fund 21 organisations delivering parenting support that meets families where they are. We’re committing to parenting support for five years. For children whose families engage with programmes like these, the evidence shows children improve physically, cognitively, and in their social and emotional development.
Equity in Justice
Opens at the end of June. Racially minoritised young men aged 18 to 25 are overrepresented at every stage of the criminal justice system. The system sees them as a problem to contain, not a person to support. Equity in Justice funds organisations that walk alongside these young men through the criminal justice system. The organisations that know how to do that have been doing it on insufficient funding for too long. We’ll make up to thirteen grants, at least half to organisations led by and for the communities they serve. The people closest to the problem should be closest to the solution. With sustained funding, those organisations can do what the system cannot: see the person.
Career Ready
Opens later in July. Only 4.8% of adults with learning disabilities are in paid employment, despite the majority wanting to work. The gap opens in school: no meaningful careers support often means no clear pathway to employment. For young people with learning disabilities, adulthood can arrive before anyone has helped them picture what work might look like for them. Career Ready puts specialist job coaches into schools and colleges, where they build the confidence, connections, and practical experience that make employment possible. Employment means income, independence, belonging.
Five funds. Over ten million pounds.
More detail follows in the coming weeks, including webinars on each fund. If your work reaches the people these funds are designed for, stay close: follow us on LinkedIn, sign up for our newsletter, or forward this to someone who needs to read it.
