About our funding

Who can apply?

To apply for an award from SCF, applicants must:

  • be a school, college, or other mainstream-based educational provision in England, and
  • work with young people with autism who are on the roll of a mainstream secondary school or college. For further information please read more about the young people we support.

What activity will we consider?

We are looking for innovative, creative solutions.

SCF will consider funding activity that will help young people with autism access mainstream school or college.

We fund activities that:

  • help autistic young people fully take part in mainstream activities where statutorily funded support is not enough
  • help autistic young people participate in after-school or outside-college activities or study support
  • improve autistic young people's mental health and well-being.

We don’t want to replicate support or interventions that are, or should be, statutorily provided. Instead, SCF funding will help those working with autistic young people to set up and run projects that will make a significant difference in conjunction with what is already on offer. See some examples of the type of activity that SCF funds here.

What SCF will not fund:

To help us make as much impact as we can, we apply very tight criteria to the type of activity that we are able to fund.

We do not fund the following type of activity:

  • funding which will be passed on to other establishments, for example within an academy or health trust
  • requests where a statutory agency (such as a local authority or health service) has assessed a need and has a responsibility to fund but has failed to so
  • projects which promote religion
  • bursaries, sponsored places, fees or equivalent
  • political activity or campaigning
  • individuals (unless an eligible organisation is applying on their behalf)
  • general appeals or endowment funds
  • help with budget shortfalls or debt repayments
  • projects with unspecified expenditure
  • organisational overheads or running costs which the organisation would incur whether the project was running or not — although we will consider funding support costs incurred as a direct result of running the project.