In 2026, organisations who can apply must be working with vulnerable young women and girls who who are already in contact with the criminal justice system and who are highly vulnerable to entering it or who are known to be at risk. Organisations must be led by and for women and girls or have specialist knowledge and expertise and be working primarily or exclusively in specific areas. In the first funding round the specialist areas are: women and girls aged 11-18 and vulnerable to offending due to being at risk of or excluded from education. involved in County Lines or gang activity or vulnerable to offending due to being care-experienced.
Our second funding opportunity will focus on vulnerable young women age 17-30 already in contact with the criminal justice system who need holistic support to help them move away from offending behaviours, such as maintaining safe tenancies, securing and retaining jobs and building secure and healthy family relationships; pre-release and through the gate support for young women to meet their immediate needs and/or support for young mothers up to the age of 30 prior to and after serving a custodial sentence.
You will also need to show us clearly that your project specifically aims to reduce the likelihood of a young woman or girl either entering the criminal justice system or re-offending, and support them to move on positively with their lives. Projects will need to demonstrate age, gender, trauma, and culturally responsive approaches to working with young women and girls.
We are particularly interested in supporting work that provides peer support from women with their own lived experience and projects that can demonstrate that they have been co-designed with the voices of young women and girls. We cannot accept applications where only some of the young people who will benefit from the project you want us to fund are young offenders.
If your grant has already finished then you are able to make an application for further funding as long as you meet our criteria. If you currently have a Young Women & Girls grant then you can make an application for continuation funding if you are within the last 12 months of your grant. Please be advised that we do not prioritise current grantees so your application will be considered alongside all applications received.
If you have a Sport 4 Development grant you can make a new application but please ensure that you have read the wider criteria to ensure that you are eligible.
Our funding guidance mentions ‘Expert organisations’. We consider this to be an organisation whose work is either exclusively or primarily focused on the areas listed and that has specialist knowledge and expertise in this area. We would not consider an expert organisation to be working across all of the areas mentioned.
In the first funding round, these specific areas relate to organisations working with: care-experienced young women and girls, young women and girls at risk of being excluded from education or who have been excluded and young women and girls involved with gangs or County Lines.
In the second funding round, the specific areas mentioned relate to young women already in contact with the criminal justice system who need holistic support to help them move away from offending behaviours, such as maintaining safe tenancies, securing and retaining jobs and building secure and healthy family relationships; organisations offering pre-release and through the gate support for young women to meet their immediate needs and organisations supporting young mothers up to the age of 30 prior to and after serving a custodial sentence.
Our 2026 funding opportunity is open to organisations led by and for women and girls or organisations working with young women and girls but who are experts in certain areas. If your organisation currently works exclusively with women in the criminal justice system and you now want to work with younger women and girls, your application will need to demonstrate that you understand the distinct needs of young women and girls with criminal convictions or those who are at a high risk of entering the criminal justice system. You will also need to show that your organisation has the expertise to be able to do this successfully.
We are not accepting applications for this funding opportunity from organisations who work with a wider group of offenders than just women and girls.
No. You may only apply for funding if the sole beneficiary group you will be working with are young women and girls age 11-18 or age 17-30 who are caught up in the criminal justice system.
Unfortunately, we are only able to fund organisations offering direct support to young people with criminal convictions or those at high risk of entering the criminal justice system. If you are undertaking research into any of our areas of interest that could have national relevance, we are always interested in hearing more about these pieces of work. We do sometimes look for opportunities to make strategic grants that impact the issues we support more widely than a project grant would.
As our focus each year changes, you are eligible to apply for another grant as long as 12 months or more has elapsed since the submission date of any previous applications. The application cannot be for exactly the same project, unless agreed with a member of the Grants Team.
Yes. You should submit your most recent set of management accounts along with your forecast income and expenditure. Additionally, please provide us with an explanation of your situation so that we know why the full set of accounts has not been submitted.
To apply for our funding, an organisation must have a minimum income of £50,000 per annum and above and a maximum income of no more than £5 million.
Yes. CICs and social enterprises must have a governing document which shows the name, aim/purpose, objects of the group, including a dissolution clause (what happens if your group ceases to function). This clause should show that you are a not for profit group by confirming that any assets remaining after all debts are paid will be given to another voluntary group with similar aims. This document should also contain details of your Trustees, Directors or Management Committee.
Yes. All organisations based and operating within the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland are eligible to apply for a grant.
Use of Funding
No. Unfortunately we do not provide funding for restorative justice initiatives.
Our funding is designed to support projects working directly with young people and the criminal justice system. We are not able to solely support the core costs of an organisation working in this area. We will however, consider reasonable contributions to the running of your organisation as part of the overall budget you develop for your project.
Our funding in 2026 focuses on supporting work with young women and girls who are already in contact with the criminal justice system and those who are highly vulnerable to entering it. The first funding round will focus on ages 11-18 and the second on ages 17-30.
We will be looking for proposals that target the most high-risk young women and girls. Applications will need to demonstrate that they are linked to schemes such as Out of Court Disposals and Point of Arrest Diversion initiatives as well as services working with those known to be at risk. Those we consider at risk in our first funding round are looked after young women and girls, young women and girls who are outside of education or on the edge of being excluded and/or involved with gangs or County lines. In the second funding round those at risk are young women who are already in contact with the criminal justice system who need holistic support to help them move away from offending behaviours, such as maintaining safe tenancies, securing and retaining jobs and building secure and healthy family relationships; pre-release and through the gate support for young women to meet their immediate needs and support for young mothers up to the age of 30 prior to and after serving a custodial sentence.
Applicant organisations will also need to show that they have strong links with Youth Offending Teams, probation, PRUs, schools and other relevant local partners who come into contact with this group of vulnerable young women and girls. We will not consider general diversion projects that seek to address issues such as reducing anti-social behaviour.
If the project that you are already running is working towards the outcomes of reducing young women and girls from reoffending or supporting young women or girls on the edge of the criminal justice system to avoid a first offence, then we will consider funding an existing project. Most of our funding though is likely to be allocated to organisations who want to build on work that they are already doing, either by increasing their capacity or developing a criminal justice focused programme.