Rees Foundation

The Rees Foundation, a UK-based charity established in 2013 by Jan Rees OBE—a pioneering foster carer—champions lifelong support for care-experienced individuals, particularly care leavers, rejecting the notion that care ends at 18, 21, or 25. Rooted in compassion, respect, empowerment, and a strengths-based approach, it is led by trustees and staff with professional expertise and lived experience in social care. The Foundation's mission is to combat isolation, foster resilience, and enable care-experienced people to thrive through holistic, person-centred advocacy, ensuring no one faces life's challenges alone while celebrating achievements of any scale.

It prioritises support for UK-resident adults and young people (aged 16+) who were in foster or residential care as children, addressing mental health, emotional wellbeing, career progression, employability, education/training access, financial emergencies, peer networks, arts projects, and interventions for those in prison or probation. Funded activities include one-to-one counselling, skills coaching, hardship grants, structured programmes, group work, achievement recognition, and advocacy—delivered directly to individuals, not organisations.

Eligibility is strictly for care-experienced individuals resident in the UK for at least three years, with applications requiring an online/email form plus documentation like ID, care history (with local authority permission), financial/employment status, exhausted other funding sources, and two referees. Grants, typically up to £5,000 annually (higher exceptionally), are paid to suppliers; rolling basis with decisions in up to 12 weeks via Grant Review Panel and quarterly Board review—no fixed deadlines or appeals.

Distinctively, it excludes all organisational, project, core, or capital funding, focusing solely on bespoke individual empowerment rather than generalist charity support, with a non-judgemental ethos shaped by adult safeguarding policies for enduring societal integration.