Children’s charity Coram has received the largest single donation in its history, a £4 million gift from the Paul Hamlyn Foundation (PHF). The donation will fund The Hamlyn Endowment for the Rights and Voice of Children, which is intended to help Coram’s work advancing the rights of children and young people and providing legal services for vulnerable children and families.

Coram says the endowment will enable it to scale up its work on children’s rights, helping to ensure children’s voices are heard by policymakers and within wider society. The endowment will help the charity work with hundreds more young people, while benefitting many more by increasing its capacity to offer legal advice to children and families in need of legal representation.

“Sadly, today, still too many children and young people in the UK do not get the help and support they need, and this generous gift from the Paul Hamlyn Foundation will enable us to advance the Coram children’s rights centre and to realise our ambitious plans for the future,” said Coram CEO Dr Carol Homden.

“This landmark gift is a reflection of the outstanding commitment of the Paul Hamlyn Foundation to those who are marginalised and to their strong and continuing leadership role in philanthropy at a critical time.”

Moira Sinclair, chief executive of the Paul Hamlyn Foundation, said Coram’s work “speaks to many of our areas of interest, including giving young people voice, supporting migrants, social justice, arts and access to education”.

“We know just how valuable long term, consistent and flexible funding can be to organisations,” she continued. “At a time when civil society is under financial stress, and the world around us feels increasingly fractured, we feel the need to act, to show our backing for some key organisations … we see as critical to and influential in the sectors we support, and it is for this reason that we have made this decision to endow Coram.”

PHF is a long-standing supporter of Coram, having made its first donation to the charity in 1997. The Foundation was established in 1987 by the philanthropist Paul Hamlyn, who bequeathed most of his estate to it when he died in 2001. It is now one of the largest independent grant-making foundations in the UK.

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