As charitable foundations, we have the power to create positive change and improve the lives of those who need it most.
That’s why we decided to use the Funders Collaborative Hub to set out our idea to bring funders together to support care experienced students at university.
Having somewhere of your own to call home matters. At the Unite Foundation, we know that with a stable home at university taken care of, estranged and care experienced young people can focus on their studies and make the most of the full university experience. We’ve been providing this through a unique scholarship scheme that covers students’ rent and bills for up to three years.
By working with a range of other funders and universities, we wanted to explore how we could build on ten years’ worth of insight to start to create real system change within higher education, ensuring that care experienced and estranged students have somewhere safe and stable to live.
As well as providing funding, the Unite Foundation campaigns and advocates for change. We believe that universities should provide a home for care experienced and estranged students as standard, rather than this being something that we should need to support in the long term.
To do that, we need to make the case for universities to understand the impact of accommodation scholarships. This is a central pillar the five-year strategy we launched in 2021. We want to significantly expand the base of evidence and a wider pool of examples that demonstrate how the costs of accommodation provision are outweighed by the transformative academic and financial benefits of estranged and care experienced students completing their studies. In doing so, we’ll clarify the need for universities to provide free accommodation for estranged and care experienced students.
We currently award 80 new scholarships each year, supporting around 240 students at a time. That isn’t a small number - but there are an estimated 16,000 estranged and care experienced young people enrolled at university across the UK, and no doubt many more who don’t consider that university is an option for them. So there’s a lot more to be done.
Open, honest conversations about what we could do individually or collectively were crucial for identifying shared priorities, interests and learning opportunities.
Our collaboration opportunity on the Funders Collaborative Hub set out our ambitions and our interest in having conversations to understand what other funders were doing and thinking around care experienced and estranged young people in higher education. Open, honest conversations about what we could do individually or collectively were crucial for identifying shared priorities, interests and learning opportunities.
The body of research clearly shows that if a young person with this background can be supported to stay the course and complete their degree, the experience is transformational – their post-degree outcomes are comparable with those of their peers. This brings into even sharper focus the data shared as part of the Independent Review into Children’s Social Care, which showed that the average lifetime cost to the state of statutory care leavers after they've left care is £1.2m per child. University isn't a magic bullet, but it can be a hugely significant moment in transforming young people’s lives.
Sharing our collaboration opportunity on the Hub opened up lots of wonderful conversations with fellow funders, and last year we launched a funding partnership with the Astra Foundation and the Dulverton Trust.
This partnership sought to work with new universities – and to make sure they also put some skin in the game. As a collective group of funders, we would cover two-thirds of the cost of accommodation scholarships, with universities asked to commit the final third.
We had great demand from universities for this opportunity, enabling us to bring together a range of new partners to further our agenda.
We followed up with a similar partnership with the Portal Trust and the University of London. This will create an additional 27 scholarships for care experienced or estranged students – transforming lives of young people, whilst providing a broader pool of evidence and insight for us to play back to universities about the impact of this activity.
We are now encouraging students to apply for the scholarship and are already seeing rising demand for places, further strengthening our view that there is real need for students to have somewhere to call home.
What has been wonderful is that the collaboration with partners has been an effective way to pool resources and expertise, increase impact and avoid duplication of efforts – as well as open up more conversations about how we strategically address the lack of participation in higher education for care experienced and estranged students. By collaborating on funding initiatives and working with universities, we can provide the support and resources that these students need to succeed.
Inspired to collaborate?
Add your own collaboration opportunity to the Hub. Connect with other funders who share your interests and find out what you could achieve together.
