Beyond grants
Future ambitions
Young Advisory Board
We will recruit 6–8 young people to advise the Board on current trends, needs, and opportunities. Each member will be paid and have access to training and volunteering opportunities.
Cultural learning days
Young people connected to the organisations we fund will get to participate in learning days and residentials. These sessions will facilitate opportunities for cultural and knowledge exchange.
Partnerships
We will establish partnerships with organisations that share our ambition to support disadvantaged young people. We are particularly interested in collaborations that help us effectively support young people who are most in need. We know we can do more together.
Proud achievements
When Joseph Levy (Joe) was diagnosed with vascular dementia in the 1980s, there was little support in the home for families affected by dementia. Having experienced the lack of available help, Joe’s wife Ninot and daughter Jane brought people together to create a new service to support families and carers of people with dementia.
They started by creating a training programme for carers but soon realised that a more focussed approach was needed.
‘Admiral Nurses’ are dedicated nurses that provide specialist dementia support. Named in memory of Joe, known as ‘Admiral Joe’ to many of his friends, the original project was set up in 1990 at the Middlesex Hospital. This led to the launch of the Dementia Relief Trust (now Dementia UK) in 1995 to further develop the nursing service.
Jane chaired the charity’s board of trustees for ten years, supported at first by her brother Peter as Vice Chair. As well as core funding, JLF initially provided office space for the charity until it moved to larger premises.
Dementia UK currently supports over 450 nurses, and now also operates a full time national helpline (staffed exclusively by experienced Admiral Nurses) to support families and carers of people with dementia.
Dementia UK is now recognized as a rapidly growing, successful national charity and is no longer dependent on JLF, although we retain links with the charity and Jane was appointed Honorary President on her retirement in 2015.
JLF’s financial support to Dementia UK (totalling £14.7m over 21 years) illustrates how we are prepared to invest in charities and issues for the long-term in order to create lasting change.
The Foundation has provided financial and non-financial support to the Cystic Fibrosis Trust since its establishment in 1964. Joe was a founder trustee and then Chairman of the Cystic Fibrosis Research Trust, after being introduced to a colleague whose young daughter had been diagnosed with CF.
In 1976 Peter (Joe's son) joined the Trust’s executive committee and in time became Vice Chairman, taking over the Chair after his father’s retirement in 1984.
In 1984 the Levy family also established the Cystic Fibrosis Holiday Fund, a charity that provided much-needed opportunities for joy and respite for young people with Cystic Fibrosis. The charity closed in 2022 after nearly 40 years.
The CF Trust is now a successful and thriving national charity funding ground-breaking research as well as offering improved quality of care and invaluable support to the 10,500 people with Cystic Fibrosis in the UK.