After Lucy's untimely and early death, her partner made a gift of £5000 to the Foundation in her memory. It was used to fund music therapy projects across five Lambeth nursery schools, helping children from low-income families.

"Lucy grew up on a Cheshire farm, loved the outdoors and being with animals. These factors helped her recover from a serious car accident when she was nine. Spending months in hospital wards, she learnt about the other children’s lives and became aware of her own family’s privilege. She moved to London after reading Classics at Cambridge, and lived in Lambeth in her 20s, and from 1998 until her death.

She was a housing officer on Greenwich and Lambeth estates. She completed an MSc in Social Policy & Planning at LSE and then worked at St Pancras Housing Association, now Origin HA. She had moved into housing development, and putting together Housing Corporation bids. She also worked in Ireland, laying the groundwork for Clúid, the first Irish Housing Association and the country’s first non-church social housing. By the time she left Origin, Lucy was the director of business and community development, bringing together different aspects of her interest in social change.

She retrained as a counsellor and psychotherapist. She worked with adults and& teenagers in private practice and also school counselling services. She became a counselling trainer at Re-Vision.

Lucy had a practical commitment to environmental issues, women's rights and the many other political causes she believed in. She loved being around people, valued education and had a lively interest in language, art, music, theatre. She is survived by Rasha, her partner of over 20 years."

If you wish to give money in remembrance of someone please get in touch with our Grants Manager (see contacts page).

Our Annual Review 2020/2021 has been published. View it online here. If you'd like a printed copy,  just let us know.

HEADLINES: WHAT WE DID IN 2020/21

• We distributed £2,208,510 via 401 grants. 277 directly to individuals (£324,198) and 124 to organizations, projects and schools to fund work with our target group (£1,884,312).
  
• In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we set up the Lambeth Community Response Fund (LCRF). It had two elements: re-targeting our grants programmes and attracting and distributing an additional £330,000 from other sources. Between late April and early September 2020 we made 62 grants totalling £872,487 (46 via LCRF and 16 to schools).
  
• We administered a community-led £300K grant programme piloting new approaches to improving the employment prospects of black citizens in Lambeth with long-term health conditions. This was a partnership venture with Guy's & St Thomas' Foundation and Black Thrive.
• The Walcot Futures programme ran for a second year, allowing three of our grantees to shadow the work of the Foundation and gain experience of charity governance, operations, and management.  
• We undertook major refurbishment of four properties (the Foundation owns 70+ properties, used to generate income for our work). We continued with the construction of six new houses. These, too, will generate income for our charitable activity in Lambeth.
• We improved our website, making it easier to navigate and more accessible.
• We planned BounceBack: our second-phase response to the pandemic. It is a two-year programme (2021-2023) funded by £2 million from our reserves. Beneficiaries will be Lambeth-resident low-income citizens under 30 who have (a) been displaced from their jobs because of Covid-19 and (b) those who are coming new to the jobs market and have found their opportunities narrowed by the pandemic’s impact on the wider labour market. More here.

The Living Wage Foundation has announced the revised hourly rates needed to allow people to get by, and to thrive.

Find out about the Living Wage campaign -

Boris Johnson has been formally warned by the UK statistics regulator about his claim that child poverty has fallen over the past decade, accoring to HuffPost UK.

"The prefixes ‘food’, ‘child’ or ‘fuel’ make life for 14 million poor Britons seem easily fixable. In truth, radical action is needed."
Aditya Chakrabortty, Guardian columnist.
See article here

We are grateful to Vauxhall MP Florence Eshalomi for responding to our concern about Lambeth Advice Centres by asking the Secretary of State for Justice about the steps he proposes (See Hansard, here). Following the question in the Commons she wrote to him with further questions: "In the Chamber, I highlighted that access to justice is under threat. In my constituency of Vauxhall, we have just lost one of our most established independent legal advice centres. As you will know from your own casework, access to free independent legal advice is essential for our citizens, especially the most disadvantaged. And in some instances, it can be life changing."