Aims and activities
Aims and questions
Aims and activities
The Corston Independent Funders' Coalition (CIFC) enables women’s access to justice through supporting women-centred, holistic and trauma-responsive approaches to diverting women from crime.
In June 2024, CIFC launched our revised statement of purpose which has four objectives around which we’re building working groups and pilot projects:
- Adoption of good practice grant-making approaches and techniques through sharing learning and advocating for women within our own Trusts and Foundations and funder networks
- Identifying and implementing good and promising practice, sharing key learning with practitioners, funders and decision-makers
- Identifying emerging issues facing women in the criminal justice system and the charities that support them and leveraging the heft, legacy and expertise of the Coalition to work with and alongside charities to secure improvements to local and national legislation, policy, and practice
- Mobilising our own Trusts' resources to deliver a robust and vibrant funding model and, where possible, advocating for a similar approach from statutory funders so that women's centres and specialist organisations and services have the funds needed to deliver vital services.
CIFC is in a test and learn phase for building our joint work under each of these objectives to understand where and how we can have the most impact. This includes expanding our focus to all stages in which women are in contact with or at risk of contact with the justice system, including early intervention work. We’re also exploring whether prevention work with girls should be a focus for the Coalition to enable the realisation of the recommendations set out by Baroness Corston in her seminal report in 2007, which advocated for ‘a radical new approach, treating women both holistically and individually – a woman-centred approach’.
How to get involved
We’re keen to welcome new funders as either full members or friends to help us operationalise our new statement of purpose (available on request). We ask members to commit to working actively on at least one of our objectives; you don’t need to be able to do influencing work to join.
We don’t currently have any pooled funding, but it’s the ambition of some of us to achieve this in the future. To date some members have been able to jointly fund specific pieces of work where there has been a mutual interest. We hope to do more of this and are currently proactively seeking out these opportunities (we are not accepting unsolicited requests for funding).
For more information or an informal conversation, contact Beth Crosland, CIFC Coalition Development Manager: Beth.Crosland.CIFC@thejabbsfoundation.co.uk
Who's involved
Who was involved
Who was involved
Members: Allen Lane Foundation, The Barrow Cadbury Trust, The Bromley Trust, Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, Firebird Foundation, Henry Smith Charity, The JABBS Foundation (Chair), Liz Hogarth (Independent), Treebeard Trust, Triangle Trust 1949 Fund
Friends: A B Charitable Trust, The Bishop Radford Trust, National Lottery Community Fund, The Robertson Trust
Learning and Resources
Overview of the CIFC (including a timeline of its work and impact so far)
Sentencing Council consultation response (an example of recent work under our influencing workstream)
