John Lyon's charity Annual Report 2024 - Report - Page 22
REPLICATION FUND
INTRODUCTION
Over the years, John Lyon’s Charity has helped to develop
several highly successful initiatives that are having an
incredibly positive impact on the lives of children and
young people. The Charity frequently observes that some of
these initiatives could be successfully replicated to benefit
children and young people in other areas where there is a
gap in similar service. However, the organisations delivering
these initiatives may lack the necessary resources and
capacity to expand on their own.
What is the Fund?
The Replication Fund seeks to enable organisations that
provide tried and tested high quality services and activities
to replicate into places across the Charity’s Beneficial Area
where there are significant gaps in provision.
What is the aim and purpose of this Fund?
The Replication Fund seeks to address these gaps in
service provision to create more equity of services between
different areas. No two local authority areas are the same.
Some have a thriving voluntary sector whilst others have a
more limited offering. Some areas have numerous services
to support young people with disabilities but in other places,
there is a distinct lack of provision.
Using the Charity’s knowledge and experience that has
built up over 30 years of grant making in North and West
London, the Replication Fund provides additional funding
for organisations that can plug these gaps by establishing
new services, replicating their original one. Grants, awarded
during Years 1 - 4 of HSC, are given for up to three years.
What is the reason behind this focus?
The Charity is in a privileged position to have a bird’s-eye
view of the Beneficial Area. We can see where the gaps
in services are, and we can see which organisations are
successfully delivering services to benefit children and
young people. In the years before the pandemic,
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JOHN LYON’S CHARITY ANNUAL REPORT 2024
we had been able to facilitate the expansion of services
into neighbouring boroughs, when home-grown offerings
had closed down. This process of replicating services,
using economies of scale to make it affordable, seemed
a good way to create that equity of provision throughout
the Beneficial Area.
In order to do this, the Grants Team identified six core
themes, which had been significantly impacted by Covid-19,
to be the priority for replicating successful initiatives:
DISABILITY & INCLUSION
The Charity supports some excellent disability
and inclusion activities, but provision throughout
the Beneficial Area has been patchy. Through the
Replication Fund, Turtle Key Arts has been able to
reproduce its popular Key Club at the Lyric Theatre
Hammersmith for young people aged 16-30 with
autism, into Brent, collaborating with The Kiln.
FAMILY AND EARLY YEARS
In the years preceding 2021, the number of grants
awarded to support families and pre-school
children was not as high as other areas of the
Charity’s spend. The impact of the pandemic
negatively affected many families, particularly
those with young children. This was borne out by
the high numbers of pre-school children not being
considered ‘school ready’ at the time they were
starting primary school. With support from the
Replication Fund, Creative Futures has been able
to replicate from Westminster, into Brent its music
activity programme for three to four year olds
that improves social, speech and language skills
in early years settings.
