Our Strategic Grants

Cranfield Trust

Triangle Trust has been working with Cranfield Trust since 2021 as part of Triangle Trust’s commitment to supporting grantees beyond just funding. Cranfield Trust is providing management support services, such as consultancy and mentoring, as well as peer support and free resources to selected grantees.  This will contribute to improved effectiveness in management and service delivery for grantees and increase the overall impact of the financial investment and support that Triangle Trust provides.

In 2023, Triangle Trust awarded a grant of £90,000 to Cranfield Trust to enable the Trust to deliver support to a wide range of organisation across the Triangle Trust funding portfolio over a 3-year period.

Cranfield Trust  

Prison Reform Trust

The Prison Reform Trust is looking at the barriers and challenges involved in significantly reducing the women’s prison population. It is working collaboratively with key stakeholders, including data gathering with practitioners, women with lived experience in the community and in prison, and using case study material to highlight good practice in order to suggest a blueprint for change.

The Prison Reform Trust is seeing what has worked using a collaborative cross-sector approach to investigate what is needed to increase confidence in alternatives to custody, such as referrals to women’s centres. This includes reviewing various stages of the criminal justice process to complete a needs assessment and to identify barriers to both, ground-level and systematic change so that solutions can be considered. The overarching aims of the programme will impact young women in prison, particularly those on remand and those serving short sentences.

Prison Reform Trust  

Social Finance

Young Carers became a focus for Social Finance when work with young people at risk of exclusion or exploitation revealed a significant number of Young Carers whose caregiving responsibilities were largely overlooked. Addressing this invisibility is critical, as Young Carers represent a vulnerable population with poorer outcomes across education, employment, and mental and physical health, all of which must be tackled from a systemic perspective.

A grant of £50,000 was awarded by Triangle Trust to support Social Finance in working towards systems change for Young Carers. This involves exploring data and ethical considerations around improving the identification and support of Young Carers, examining the intersection of caring responsibilities with other vulnerabilities such as exploitation and exclusion, and convening partners to drive change aligned with sector-wide ‘system priorities.’

Social Finance  

Kinship

Whilst kinship care is usually a more positive alternative for children and young people who are unable to remain in the care of their birth parents, as a group kinship carer families are extremely vulnerable. Carers are older, over 60% of kinship carers are over 55, and the majority are grandparents. They are also poorer, 76% of kinship care children live in deprived households and kinship carers are also in worse health than any other group raising children.

Kinship carers often feel invisible and taken for granted but have traditionally been a group who are keen to speak out and raise awareness of the issues that affect them. Kinship intends to utilise this and the strong networks of kinship carers tat exist in the North East of England and develop a powerful network of campaigners. They will be supported to come together to influence a step change in kinship care awareness and support at local and national level. This will be used as a model to roll out to other groups of kinship carers across England to drive both local change and influence national agendas such as the adoption of a Kinship Care Bill.

A grant of £50,000 was awarded over 12 months to employ a Campaigns and Engagement Officer.

Kinship  

Place2Be

Place2Be’s Art Room team is working with young carers and young carer services to co-design an Art Room Legacy Project. Place2Be’s Art Room is a project which uses art to support children and young people’s mental health. Young carers are being consulted in the development of digital Art Room resources to engage young carers in creative activities, so they can reflect on their experiences and be supported to build positive social and emotional connections with others. The project aims to improve identification and support for young carers in schools by increasing awareness and understanding through digital resources co-designed and developed with young carers. These resources will be shared widely, including via Place2Be’s online platform ‘The Staffroom’, accessed by 13,000 teachers and school staff nationally.

Place2Be  

Women’s Centres are seen as being an ideal solution to this issue and those already working with female offenders see significant positive outcomes for women and significant cost savings. There is a growing group of women’s organisations advocating for the expansion of Women’s Centres but their voices need to be amplified.

Triangle Trust funding will enable Women in Prison to provide the support needed to develop the current coalition of stakeholders into a more formal Federation of Women’s Centres and grow the number of members. A grant of £50,000 has been awarded over 12 months.

Women in Prison