Age UK Bucks
Based in Aylesbury and working across the County, Age UK Bucks supports older residents to help them maintain their independence and well-being. Age UK Bucks’ staff team and 240 volunteers support over 4,000 older Bucks residents who suffer loneliness and isolation, especially following the pandemic, who are hit hardest by the cost-of-living crisis, and where health and mobility challenges, digital exclusion and sensory loss can leave them marginalised with nowhere else to turn.
The charity provides a range of services including information and advice, supporting applications for welfare benefits, connecting people with local activities and groups, supporting independent living and the Age Friendly Bucks programme.
Read more here.
Animal Antiks Charity
Animal Antiks, a care farm providing animal-assisted therapy for people of all ages, was established over a decade ago. Its focus is on reducing social isolation and mental health problems while members develop practical and social skills and build resilience and confidence. Activities include animal care, alpaca walks, cuddle clubs, a country club, and farm therapy.
Spending time in nature and with animals has been scientifically proven to promote good mental well-being, regulate anxiety, and relieve stress. Animals, being nonjudgmental listeners, make excellent confidants!
Members are referred through Adult Social Care, mental health services, or local support organisations. The experienced team works closely with members, supporting them with daily task achievements to help widen opportunities, expand experiences, and provide enjoyable and welcoming respite.
Read more here.
Been There
Been There provides 1:1 peer support for people struggling with body image and eating disorders from a vetted and trained Mentor with lived experience of overcoming similar issues.
The charity’s ‘Been There’ app is a unique platform designed to support adults aged 18 and over who are struggling with body image issues. It connects users, with vetted and trained Mentors who have personal experience with similar challenges. The aim is to provide a safe space where Mentees can talk openly and honestly about their struggles with someone who truly understands and has been there themselves.
The app emphasises the importance of feeling understood and not alone in one’s struggles with body image. It aims to create positive improvements in users’ lives through active listening and empathetic support.
Read more here.
Brighter Futures Together
Brighter Futures Together is a charity dedicated to improving the mental health and well-being of young people. It operates a variety of projects aimed at supporting young individuals and their families, carers, and those working with youth.
Its initiatives include direct support projects, consultancy, and workforce training to enhance outcomes for children and young people.
Key projects include:
- Boost Mental Health Project: This initiative works in partnership with the Berkshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust’s CAMHS to provide additional support to young people waiting for or accessing mental health services.
- My Social Action: A weekly group empowering young volunteers to engage in community projects.
- Thames Valley Neurodiversity Umbrella Project: A collaboration with the ADHD Foundation to promote neurodiversity in schools and businesses.
Brighter Futures Together also provides consultancy services and specialised training for those involved in youth services, ensuring a broader impact on the mental health and well-being of young people across various sectors.
Read more here.
Chilterns Neuro Centre
The Chilterns Neuro Centre is a charity based in Wendover, Aylesbury, which offers comprehensive support for people affected by multiple sclerosis (MS), Parkinson’s disease, and stroke. Founded in 1985, the centre has expanded its services beyond MS to include support for Parkinson’s and stroke survivors.
The centre provides a range of treatments and therapies, including:
- Physiotherapy
- Hydrotherapy
- Oxygen Treatment
- Acupuncture
- Exercise Classes
- Pilates
- Speech Therapy
- Counselling
- Complementary Therapies
- Yoga
The centre also offers social and therapeutic leisure groups, ensuring a holistic approach to care.
In addition to patient care, the Chilterns Neuro Centre offers support for carers and families, recognising the broader impact of neurological conditions on loved ones. It works in collaboration with other local care providers to ensure a comprehensive support system.
Read more here.
Lindengate
Lindengate is an award-winning mental health charity which provides social and therapeutic horticulture to people of all ages who want to improve their wellbeing.
Lindengate’s primary focus is on early intervention and prevention by providing support to people struggling with their mental health. The charity supports people with a wide range of mental health needs from people feeling in a low mood they cannot kick, to people managing a serious mental illness who need help to maintain their mental health.
Its Wellbeing programmes use social and therapeutic horticulture to help improve mental health by bringing people together, offering chances to learn new skills, boosting self-esteem and confidence, building resilience, and providing physical exercise in a beautiful, green, and calming space.
Read more here.
Marlow Opportunity Playgroup
The Marlow Opportunity Playgroup provides early intervention for up to 30 pre-school children (0-5 years) who have a range of challenging health conditions.
The objective is to help prepare children for either a special needs ‘next step’ – or in some cases acceptance – into mainstream education. It provides a range of development opportunities as part of the individual Education, Health and Care Plans created for each child, usually involving input from medical professionals, education specialists and parents. In doing so the charity provides significant support to parents who are often struggling to come to terms with a totally unexpected and unwanted set of circumstances.
Read more here.
Plunkett UK
Plunkett is a national charity which supports rural communities to set up and run a wide range of businesses in community ownership, contributing to a vision for resilient, thriving and inclusive communities throughout the UK.
Its role is to raise awareness of the community ownership model, provide practical business support and training to people setting up and running community businesses, and create a positive environment for them to thrive through research and public affairs.
In the last 20 years, Plunkett has supported the creation of over 800 community businesses ranging from village shops, pubs, and cafes, through to woodlands, fisheries, and farms. Once trading, they become the beating heats of the communities they serve, and seek to benefit the entire community, not just their members.
Read more here.
The Theatre Shed
The Theatre Shed is an inclusive theatre company offering expertly guided Performing Arts workshops in the heart of Chesham and Amersham. The charity’s diverse performers who are aged six to 18+yrs, represent disabled, non-disabled and neurodivergent communities.
The Theatre Shed’s projects aim to support social, emotional, and creative skill development through performance and its inclusive company represents an all-encompassing cross section of the community.
Its member-led process empowers individuals to embrace their unique voices, fostering confidence and self-expression.
The Theatre Shed nurtures inquisitive, imaginative, and bold talents. 70% of the people currently involved in The Theatre Shed have a disability and 10% of the people currently involved in The Theatre Shed are on a full or part bursary place due to financial difficulty.
Read more here.
Youth Concern
Youth Concern is a charity dedicated to supporting vulnerable young people aged 13-25 in Aylesbury Vale. The organisation offers a range of services designed to address various challenges faced by youth, including homelessness, mental health issues, and unemployment.
Its key services include drop-in centres, counselling services, emergency overnight accommodation for young people who are homeless or at risk of homelessness, supported housing providing up to 18 months of accommodation and support to help young people transition to independent living, employment and education support, and help for young people dealing with substance misuse issues and promoting sexual health awareness.
Youth Concern’s holistic service delivers real benefits for young people with multiple needs and ensures that young people are supported at their own pace and on their own terms.
Read more here.
Calibre Audio – Mission:
Calibre Audio provides over 15,000 audiobooks for anyone with a disability which means they struggle to read print. This includes blindness and visual impairment, motor disorders like Parkinson’s or stroke and learning disabilities like dyslexia. For young people, print disability can seriously affect learning and development. For the elderly, perhaps coming to terms with age-related sight loss, losing the power to read can be devastating. The charity’s aim is to enrich life quality and opportunities for people of all ages with a print disability. Calibre Audio currently reaches 490 members across Buckinghamshire, with ages ranging from five to 105.
Awarded £7,000
Chiltern Music Therapy – Mission:
Chiltern Music Therapy strives for a caring world where music therapy is the transformative thread in everyday life. The charity harnesses the power of music, inspires through human story and fascinates through science to light up a network of champions. By providing music therapy, community music and training to people of all ages and needs across England, the charity enriches the lives of its beneficiaries.
Awarded £7,000
Chiltern Rangers – Mission:
At Chiltern Rangers, the mission is to enhance the Chilterns’ habitats through conservation, education and community engagement.
The charity works with local communities to provide habitat management in Buckinghamshire and the Chilterns.
The team can be found in the woodlands, chalk grasslands, commons, ponds and chalk streams. Chiltern Rangers’ work can only be achieved with the help of its volunteers – people of all ages, abilities and backgrounds, plus community organisations, charities, social enterprises, schools and colleges.
Awarded £7,000
Connection Support - Mission:
Connection Support’s team of staff members and volunteers work alongside people to overcome life’s challenges. Its mission is to support everyone in society to become safely and sustainably housed and live as independently as possible.
The charity provides a wide range of services which offer support with homelessness, housing support, mental health, independent living, preventing isolation, parental mentoring, refugee resettlement and social prescribing.
By working collaboratively with other organisations, Connection Support provides tailored support and advice to a range of adults and families in Buckinghamshire, Milton Keynes and Oxfordshire ensuring the best outcome for all its clients.
Awarded £7,000
Florence Nightingale Hospice Charity – Mission:
Florence Nightingale Hospice Charity’s vision is to enable the best hospice care for anyone in Buckinghamshire who needs it.
The charity is committed to commissioning comprehensive and high-quality care for local people with life-limiting illness wherever and whenever they need it.
By enhancing and complementing the care and support delivered by Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust, FNHC ensures patients, families and carers get the clinical, practical and emotional support they need to make the most of every day they have together.
Awarded £7,000
Inspire Bucks - Mission:
Inspire Bucks supports children and young people from disadvantaged backgrounds across the County by providing Christmas and birthday gifts throughout the year.
In 2022 presents were distributed to 3,400 children and young people and the charity is taking on more projects to support young adults and children and working with youth leaders, social workers, food banks and foster carers among others.
Inspire Bucks latest project is Inspire for Life, which launches in February 2024 to provide care leavers with small grants to assist with driving lessons, work clothes, study equipment or soft furnishings for their first home or halls of residence.
Awarded £17,000
Missenden Walled Garden - Mission
The Missenden Walled Garden charity empowers adults with learning disabilities to transform their lives through Social Therapeutic Horticulture and community engagement.
With its dedicated team of staff and volunteers, the charity supports its members through teamwork, education, community involvement and social inclusion. Its focus is horticulture and the natural environment, but can encompass other activities, including cookery, arts, music and sports.
Missenden Walled Garden supports the local community with its horticultural skills and provides horticultural services, planting and maintaining a 10-acre site for its base at Missenden Abbey, and growing fruit and vegetables for their kitchens.
Awarded £14,000
One-Eighty - Mission
One-Eighty was established over a decade ago and has a significant track record supporting young people aged 4-18, and their families, with their mental health and education needs.
Over the last academic year, One-Eighty has directly impacted the lives of nearly 1,800 young people and their families.
The charity provides intensive one-to-one interventions for those with the most complex needs which can prevent them from attending school, offering preventative mental health and early help projects to teach strategies to support mental health needs; offering training and therapeutic supervision for professionals and working with individual schools to create a whole-school approach to supporting young people’s mental health (One-Eighty’s Schools Partnership Model).
Awarded £20,000
Restore Hope – Mission:
Restore Hope is a Christian social action charity set on 360 acres of stunning countryside. The charity supports disadvantaged children, young people, and families, addressing pathways that can lead to (and perpetuate) disadvantage, including low confidence; poor life skills; being unskilled and/or unemployed; and living in broken family units.
Its programme of work focuses on inspiring, training and equipping those who find themselves in difficult circumstances. Restore Hope delivers robustly researched and evaluated courses, hosts special memory-making events on its unique farm estate, provides crisis support, and delivers weekly fresh food boxes to doorsteps, with much seasonal produce grown on its land, tended to by children, families and young people.
Awarded £7,000
Tall Ships Youth Trust - Mission
Tall Ships Youth Trust is a youth development outdoor learning charity. With a particular focus on those from disadvantaged backgrounds, the organisation has been improving the skills and life chances of young people since 1956.
The charity envisions a world where all young people strive to create better outcomes for themselves and for their communities. To do this, it offers young people life-changing voyages on board its ocean-going yachts.
These voyages enable young people to develop the life skills, social skills, confidence and self-esteem needed to realise their true potential and make positive life choices, supporting them on their journey to adulthood and for some, into volunteering and careers in the maritime sector and the blue economy.
Awarded £7,000