Forces in Mind Trust has awarded £49,800 to the Directory of Social Change (DSC) for a new research project, exploring funding for support for Service children. The research will help the Service Children’s Progression Alliance to enhance the accessibility and quality of funding for Armed Forces children and young people’s educational success and progression.
The project is based on objectives from the SCiP Alliance Funders’ Forum’s action plan. It will establish the first ever account of the landscape of funding supporting Armed Forces children and young people’s success and translate existing knowledge and evidence into improvements in practice and policy in relation to funding. As part of the project, DSC will produce a scoping report on support for Armed Forces children and young people.
The research will take place over six months.
Tom McBarnet, Chief Executive (Acting) of Forces in Mind Trust, said
“We are pleased to be working again with the research team at DSC to fund this important project. We know that Service children can be at risk of disadvantage. The ‘Living in Our Shoes’ report led by Andrew Selous MP and published in late 2020 and the subsequent UK Armed Forces Families Strategy set out a series of recommendations and targets which the SCiP Alliance Funders’ Forum is keen to help address. This research will provide important evidence and guidance to enact some key SCiP Alliance objectives, which, in turn, should help to ensure that Service children are less likely to face disadvantage.”
Clare Scherer, CEO, Naval Children’s Charity, and Chair of the SCiP Alliance Funders’ Forum said
“The Naval Children’s Charity are hugely grateful to Forces in Mind Trust for their grant to DSC to explore the landscape of funding support to Armed Forces children across the UK. This addition to their definitive sector guides in the Focus On series will enable greater collaboration and partnership working from charities and organisations and help us to identify the needs of and further ways to support our children and young people. The relationship between DSC and FiMT on previous research gives a solid foundation to support this new piece of research.”
Chester Howarth, Senior Researcher, Directory of Social Change (DSC), said
“We at DSC firmly believe in the importance of establishing an evidence base to support policy and practice. At the present moment, there is much to learn about the organisations funding support for Armed Forces children and young people. With this new research, we can begin not only to map out the funding landscape but to connect funders. DSC are grateful to FiMT for their support and commitment to generating quality evidence, and we look forward to working with SCiP Alliance on this important work.”
