2016

Every day people in the UK go hungry because they are in crisis and temporarily do not have enough money to buy food. Having been made aware of the problem of “hidden hunger” by a local mother, the Trust’s founders Paddy and Carol Henderson launched the first Trussell Trust foodbank from their garden shed in 2000. They went on to develop the principles that hold firm today: all food should be donated and volunteers should be enlisted to administer the food and provide non-judgemental emotional support.

Mark Goldring is no stranger to the Charity Awards podium. He was chair of rehabilitation charity Revolving Doors when it scooped the Overall Award for its link worker project in 2002. He graced the stage in 2004 as chief executive of VSO, when it won the international aid and development category for its projects to attract more volunteers from developing nations. And when Mencap carried off the Overall Award in 2011 for its campaign to get NHS staff to treat learning disabled people with more respect, Goldring was in the photos then too.

Recognising critical wastage and inefficiencies in the way that vulnerable people were being given legal advice in Portsmouth, the YOU Trust transformed client support through its advisory service, with dramatic results. Through Advice Portsmouth, the YOU Trust provides free support and legal advice to anyone in the local community struggling with poverty, homelessness, disability, ill health or abuse, age-related problems or other care issues.

Eureka!’s Access All Areas project set out to bring more disabled children and their families to the children’s museum. Staff at the Halifax-based museum found that disabled children were often excluded from days out, simply because of poor physical access into a building or lack of support once there. The struggle to access theatre, arts, museums and leisure facilities within local communities was something Eureka! wanted to change.

In 2003, Hanif Qadir witnessed rising tensions in the Walthamstow area of London – an increase in violent street crime and extremist behaviour – and worried about the impact it would have on young people growing up in the area. He resolved to take action to help. He formed the Active Change Foundation, which launched the Young Leaders Programme, intended to teach young people the skills and knowledge to help them identify and extinguish conflicts and radical behaviours.

Studies show that 40 per cent of deaf people will develop a mental health problem at some point in their lives – twice the rate of the hearing population. Despite this, only a few deaf people can negotiate barriers in the mainstream care pathway. BSL Healthy Minds, delivered by SignHealth, is the only national Psychological Therapy Service with a specialist workforce who are all deaf or deaf culturally aware, and fluent in British Sign Language (BSL). It is the only Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) service for deaf people.

The Boxing Academy is a nationally-recognised school, with the ethos and feel of a boxing gym. It has developed a unique method for engaging vulnerable and challenging students. Since 2010, 90 per cent of them have progressed to further education, training or employment. The Academy employs an intensive mentoring system within a framework of small class sizes, high-quality teaching, personal support and daily exercise to help even the most difficult-to-reach children reengage with their education. Daily boxing training delivered by ex-professional boxers means pupils can expend their energy purposefully, and learn teamwork, discipline and the acceptance of authority – but there is no contact sparring and they do not compete.

Keep Britain Tidy’s ‘We’re Watching You’ poster campaign has been incredibly successful at tackling one of the most offensive forms of littering. While dog fouling has reduced over the past 15 years and more owners responsibly clean up after their pets, certain areas still have hotspots and it was clear that local authorities needed a low-cost solution. Evidence suggested that a major factor in many dog-walkers not disposing of their dog’s waste is because they feel they won’t be seen if exercising it outside of daylight. Therefore the posters used by KBT needed to be made of a material that glowed in the dark – used previously in emergency exit signage, but never before in a campaigning setting.

In Hull, an estimated 25,000 women and 19,000 children will experience domestic abuse each year. In the past, women fleeing such relationships were forced to choose between hostel accommodation and unsuitable move-on housing. The charity wanted to develop safe houses to meet the demand from its service users, but cuts in funding from its usual sources meant it had to think innovatively about how to develop these houses.

Combat Stress provides specialist clinical treatment and support to ex-servicemen and women with mental health conditions. The PTSD Intensive Treatment Programme is a six-week residential programme to help people with post-traumatic stress disorder alongside other mental health problems. One in five armed forces veterans suffer from mental illness – 4 to 6 per cent of them with PTSD – and often find it difficult to engage with civilian programmes.

Vision for a Nation is a high-impact charity that supports health ministries in emerging countries to deliver nationwide access to local and affordable eye car. Visual impairment is a hugely neglected global health issue, with some 285 million people living today with visual impairments and over 2 billion who live with poor vision but have no access to local eye care. In 2009 the Rwandan Ministry of Health estimated that some 1.2 million of Rwanda’s 12 million citizens were in need of glasses and that some 300,000 of its citizens were clinically blind. Yet the country had just one ophthalmologist per million people.

Every day people in the UK go hungry because they are in crisis and temporarily do not have enough money to buy food. Having been made aware of the problem of “hidden hunger” by a local mother, the Trust’s founders Paddy and Carol Henderson launched the first Trussell Trust foodbank from their garden shed in 2000. They went on to develop the principles that hold firm today: all food should be donated and volunteers should be enlisted to administer the food and provide non-judgemental emotional support.