Foundation Grant Scheme: Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Please complete our Foundation Grant Scheme application form fully. 

As you can’t save your progress on the form, we recommend checking all sections and planning your application first to ensure you have all the information we need.

We can fund up to £1,500 and you can make one application to the scheme every three years.

We can fund a wide variety of courses, such as lorry driving, wedding planning, health and safety, beauty, English as a Second or Other Language (ESOL), counselling and personal trainer courses.

We generally welcome funding requests for vocational courses that provide useful skills and qualifications to gain employment.

To help you gain employment, we can fund residence permits, security or construction licences, ID such as birth certificates and provisional driving licences, and DBS checks.

We also fund bus or rail passes and childcare to enable you to attend a course or training. Applications to pay for kits that are needed to complete a course are also considered, as long as they are purchased through the course provider.

We cannot fund...

• driving lessons or petrol for a car
• laptops, clothing or other items that cannot be purchased through a course provider
• multiple courses that, when taken as a whole, don’t indicate a clear career goal (for example, applying for a massage therapist course and IT technician course)
• items that are unlikely to lead to paid employment, such as courses that there are few job opportunities in or courses that will only lead to voluntary work.

If your course is eligible for government funding to pay for course fees through initiatives such as Student Finance England or an Advanced Learner Loan, we cannot fund this through the Foundation Grant Scheme. 

Customers who can access courses for free through local colleges or adult education centres cannot have their fees paid for by the grant. In this case, you can apply to the grant for help with travel or childcare costs when attending college. 

If you are still unsure if the course you are looking at will be eligible, please email us at foundation@wdh.co.uk 

As proof of your course and the costs involved, you must provide quotes from the college or provider. 

After submitting your application, please send your ID and quotes to foundation@wdh.co.uk within 14 days. We recommend emailing your course or service provider and forwarding the information to us or sending us a screenshot of the course information from the course provider’s website. Please provide the website address if you choose to send us a screenshot. 

Ideally, the information should include the name of the provider, their address, the course or item name, and price.

Some requests, such as for ID, travel passes, childcare and for security or construction licences, don’t have alternative providers so we don’t expect these to be mentioned on the application.

Some courses, for example minibus driving, don’t have several options in the local area. If this is the case, please mention this in your application. 

However, most requests we receive do have alternatives and so we'd need to see three quotes with your preferred choice written in your application.

All applications require two forms of ID, including one proof of address. This can include a council tax or utilities bill, Job Centre or Universal Credit letter, birth certificate, passport or driving licence.

Clear photographs taken on a mobile phone are accepted. ID must be emailed to foundation@wdh.co.uk within 14 days of submitting an application.

Please email the information to us at foundation@wdh.co.uk along with your quotes and ID and ensure the total amount required is written in your application.

The grant can only be used for courses that haven’t started yet (ideally they would start at least a month after the next deadline) and we cannot fund anything that has already been paid for.

Yes, you can still apply. In your application, please give us the name of the person who received the grant and your relationship to them.

Yes but application will be considered within the next round. 

Applicants who met the deadline will be waiting for a decision on their application and so we can’t allow late applicants through when this may delay the process for others.

We can process applications within a few weeks for requests up to £250 and if there is a specific reason why the applicant needs the grant before the deadline. For example, if an applicant has a job arranged and they require an Enhanced DBS check before they can start work, we can fast-track their application.

However, we cannot fast-track applications for courses starting within two weeks, for requests above £250 or where there isn’t a reason for an application to be processed before the deadline. If an application is eligible for fast-tracking, we will try and process this quickly, but in busy periods this cannot be guaranteed.

After each deadline we present applications to the Foundation Grant Panel consisting of WDH employees and tenants and the panel decides how we will award grants. This takes place around two to four weeks after the deadline. 

All applicants will then receive a decision by email.

We will email you a link to an Offer Form to sign to confirm you agree to the terms of the grant and for support from a Community Employment Advisor in your search for a job.

We will also require payment details for the course or service provider(s). It is your responsibility to contact the college or course provider for their payment details. 

After we receive your completed Offer Form, we will email you within 10 working days when payment will be made to your course or service provider. You may then need to contact them again to book onto the course.