Strands of Grants – v01

1. Research and Policy

We work in collaboration with respected research bodies, campaign groups and think tanks to tackle causes of urgent problems and promote innovative work. We want to ensure that learning is shared as widely as possible and try to influence social change.

 

a) Nutrition and Wellbeing

The AIM Foundation supported the work of researching and promoting the Bredesen Protocol, a multi-factorial lifestyle and nutrition based approach to treating and reversing early onset Alzheimers. An award of £32,000 was made towards the initial research by the University of Lancaster Alzheimer’s Research.  They are peer-reviewing all the research literature of multi- factorial treatments for chronic illnesses. This is the first step towards developing a proposal for larger public funding of trials in NHS of using a multi-modal non-pharmological treatment programme for Dementia.

 

b) Young People

The Royal Foundation Heads Together Campaign – The foundation contributed towards this effective campaign to reduce the stigma around discussing one’s mental health difficulties. It is our intention to make future grants addressing the huge increase amongst teenagers with mental health issues and pressure on adolescent services.

 

c) Early Years

A second year’s grant of £25,000 was made to The Wave Trust, who is trying to break the damaging, inter- generational family cycles of childhood neglect and abuse.  We continue to support their social policy work in demonstrating the need for universal early prevention through partnership working in pioneering communities. They want to help midwives and health visitors across a population identify which families  need  extra  support during pregnancy and the first years of the child’s emotional and social development.

Mellow-Parents was given funding to undertake a full independent evaluation of the impact of Mellow Babies group work with vulnerable parents. The learning will help improve the outcomes of this work that strengthens the parent-baby attachment. Hopefully this evidence of impact will encourage more commissioning agencies to use this effective intervention and reach more beneficiaries.

2. Prevention

The AIM Foundation funds core costs of medium sized organization over a number of years that demonstrate strong leadership and are delivering effective prevention work and are looking to increase their impact or scale up. We look for opportunities to leverage their effectiveness.

 

a) Young People

The third year’s grants were made through Impetus-PEF to support their on-going preventative  work  with disadvantaged and disengaged young people. Through many charity partners they continue to build the capacity and impact of these organisations, which are developing the  young people’s self confidence, motivation, academic qualifications, and personal qualities in order that they can successfully move into work or further education. We agreed in the future our donations would support core policy work.

The third year’s grant of £20,000 was made to TLG Transforming Lives for Good for their trained  volunteer coaching programme, which supports primary school pupils  at risk of failing academically due to emotional and social problems. Over the last year they have achieved good results with the children behaving better and feeling more positive about school.

 

b) Early Years

Institute of Health Visiting – a new multi-year grant was made towards the setting up of regional forums of Health Visitors to help disseminate best practice and research around supporting families needing support in their mental wellbeing around the time of birth.

3. Support

The AIM Foundation helps improve the wellbeing of disadvantaged and deprived people who live in East Anglia. We fund through small and local groups or initiatives that deliver best practice support that could be scaled up or a model for replication. The focus is on people living in Essex, as this is where AIM’s endowment funds were generated and the Founder Trustees have lived.

 

a) Young People

The Children’s Society in East Anglia was awarded a further multi-year grant to the Community Hidden Harm Awareness Team. They improve the physical and emotional wellbeing of children and young people whose parents are misusing substances and are victims of abuse and neglect, resulting in underachievement at school and being more prone to truancy.

 

b) Early years

Parent’s First – A new multi-year commitment of support began with this group working in deprived areas of Essex to train ‘community parent’ volunteers, so they can provide peer-support to mothers of infants.

Evaluation of the effectiveness of the two-year collaborative work, co-ordinated by the Essex Community Foundation, employing independent domestic violence advocates based in hospitals, has begun. These advocates provided direct support to victims of abuse and training to NHS staff. They have focused on increasing the awareness in A & E and maternity departments so victims are identified early and provided with the appropriate specialist support.

 

c) Other Support

Water Harvest is a small but very effective grass-roots organization that provides safe clean water to rural communities. We continue to support this community development in areas of great economic hardship with an annual grant of £10,000.

4. Gifts

Some small grants are awarded at the discretion of  individual trustees. Some of these may be made as a way of researching and learning about new areas of funding. These are included in the full list in the annual report.

 

 

2017 – 2018

1. Research and Policy

2. Prevention

  • Action for Happiness – helping people take action for a happier and more caring world
  • Lord Mayor’s Appeal –helping 1 million people thrive
  • Institute of Health Visiting –  focus is excellence and consistency in health visiting practice improving health outcomes for everyone
  • Cued Speech – for deaf children and adults to help overcome the problems of lipreading by making all the sounds of the spoken language clearly visible

3. Support

  • The Children’s Society in East Anglia – offering a range of services for children, young people and families across Essex
  • Parents 1st – social enterprise delivering high quality peer support during pregnancy, birth and the early months
  • Water Harvest – working with rural communities to harvest the monsoon rains, enabling the poorest people to reap the benefits of safer and sustainable water