Our corporate partners
Our fantastic partners make it possible for Sense to support people with complex disabilities to live life to the full.
Find out more about some of our current and past corporate partnerships.
Current partners
Irwin Mitchell
Irwin Mitchell has been supporting Sense Children’s Services at Sense TouchBase Pears Birmingham for the past couple of years. They funded a Christmas party for MSI children and their families, and brought the Easter Bunny round for an Easter egg hunt with the community.
We are excited to announce that our work together has moved to the next level, via a multi-year partnership in support of our national early intervention programme.
Sense recently worked with the National Centre for Social Research to deepen our understanding of the scale of complex disabilities in the UK. We now know that there are approximately 283,000 children 0-17 with complex disabilities in England, so we must accelerate the pace of change so that more disabled children don’t get left behind.
Thanks to our partnership with Irwin Mitchell, we can plan our offer for the next 3 years, increasing our reach to ensure more disabled children and families can get the best start in life.
Village Hotels Group
Village Hotels have supported Sense in various fundraising efforts in 2023, including a Spin-a-thon and Winter Campaign to collect second-hand clothing to sell in our charity shops. We are extremely excited to announce a formal partnership for 2024, which will see all 33 Village Hotels across the country unite in raising funds for Sense charitable services.
Village employees will embark on a year of activities and workshops to improve accessibility and upskill their customer service offer, learning to better understand the needs of staff and customers with disabilities. Workshops include Disability Awareness training, specific workshops for gym staff on Connecting Differently Through Sport, and basic British Sign Language training.
Severn Trent Community Fund
The Severn Trent Community Fund is funding a major project at our Sense Hub Loughborough. We are adapting an unused, inaccessible area to create a multi-purpose accessible Outdoor Hub, that includes an area for specialist Forest School activities and a Horticultural space.
For disabled people, outdoor spaces can bring significant barriers including uneven paving that is not suitable for wheelchairs or mobility aids, insufficient space to move between equipment, inaccessible signage and a lack of sensory stimulation. These barriers mean that there’s often a disconnect from nature and limited opportunities for people with complex disabilities to take part in outdoor play or activities. The accessible outdoor horticulture space we are creating in Loughborough will enable people with complex disabilities to improve their wellbeing by connecting, being active, learning, volunteering, and being sustainable.
The outdoor space has been transformed from an unused mound of earth to a levelled, paved space with a sheltered classroom and ample space for our horticultural and forest school activities. The space is accessible and safe for all to move around in and allows people to get a feel for the area and determine how they would like the garden to be designed. Staff and students will contribute to design elements such as where flower beds will go, what plants they would like to have and where to put them, accessible signage and sensory elements such as colour contrast and auditory, tactile stimulation. We are excited to begin the design element early 2024.
Compass Group
Compass Group Foundation is supporting Sense to maintain and grow our Employment Service, allowing us to open our second programme in Loughborough, to join the original programme operating from Sense TouchBase Pears, Birmingham.
Compass Group Foundation’s mission is to improve the lives of people through education and innovation, empowering them to play a key role in the future of food for their communities. As part of the partnership, Compass Group is championing a Hospitality Zone at our Pan Disability Job Fair in Sense TouchBase Pears, Birmingham (Spring 2024), and will be running specific workshops for jobseekers interested in a career in the hospitality industry.
Snozone
Snozone has been supporting Sense since 2014. Their mission to ensure that everyone, regardless of ability or disability, can access and enjoy snow sports means that they freely offer family events, centre visits and sponsorship opportunities to Sense. As a Disability Confident Employer, they are committed to upskilling their employees, with Sense providing basic British Sign Language Training and Disability Awareness Workshops.
Snozone employees continue to raise funds for Sense through several events from ski-ing challenges to Sensational Tea Parties, and raise awareness by displaying Sense videos and posters on-site as well as having dedicated drop off points for donations to be sold in Sense shops.
The Mears Foundation
The Mears Foundation is supporting a full renovation and fit-out of our sensory room at Woodside Family Centre, allowing us to re-open the room and provide the disabled community with free-of-charge sensory play. Our Woodside Family Centre has been supporting children with deafblindness and complex disabilities for over 30 years. The centre supports people across the Southwest with families travelling from as far as Devon and Dorset to engage in a range of programmes, over 1,700 people receive support at Woodside.
Support from Mears Foundation means we can equip the room with new technology, equipment, and modifications to allow the best possible experience for disabled children. We are excited to work alongside volunteers from Mears in the design and decoration of the room, and other small building works across the Centre.
Boden
Boden is supporting Sense with a regular supply of brand-new, quality products throughout the year. This supports our shops in raising much-needed funds to provide specialist support so that no one, no matter how complex their disabilities, is isolated, left out, or unable to fulfil their potential.
Head to your nearest Sense shop, or our eBay store to nab some bargains and support Sense.
Former partners
Severn Trent Community Fund
Severn Trent Community Fund has supported Sense to develop a Sensory Studio within our TouchBase Pears Hub. The space we have been able to create thanks to this grant is bright and tactile with specific sensory spaces and toys that will encourage children to explore and develop skills whilst parents with shared experiences can come together to offer peer to peer support. Response from families that have attended activities and sessions in the room have been incredible, especially as we have been able to provide a programme of summer activities from our new room.
One of our main successes has been how satisfied parents have been with the project. 100% of parents would “recommend Sense’s service to other parents and carers of children aged 0-8 with complex needs.” In the qualitative interviews parents had only praise for the service, particularly for the staff (their expertise, flexibility, and positive attitude) and the physical space.
Veolia
Our partnership with Veolia Environmental Trust helped us build a brand new community garden at Sense TouchBase Pears.
For many disabled people, access to the natural environment is often complicated, with so many barriers getting in the way. That’s why we set out to improve community facilities at our centre in Selly Oak, Birmingham. This donation supports our Connecting Communities project, which is disabled-led, in consultation with disabled people and developed by award-winning disabled horticulturalist and designer Mark Lane.
Thames Water
Sense is partnering with Thames Water to raise awareness of their Priority Services Register, helping them to support people with complex disabilities.
Our partnership has encouraged 4,000 customers to join the Priority Services Register since January 2022, with Thames Water reporting a 900% increase in sign-ups in the first month since launch!
Severn Trent
Sense is partnering with Severn Trent to develop employment and training opportunities for disabled people, removing barriers to the world of work.
With Sense, Severn Trent Academy enhanced their employment and training offers for disabled people. Severn Trent staff have received training from Sense in:
- Deaf awareness
- Sight loss awareness
- Assistive technology
- Access to Work
In April 2022, Severn Trent sponsored Sense’s Pan Disability Job Fair, supporting 150 disabled jobseekers to meet 23 employers. The Severn Trent Community Fund also partnered with Sense to help us create a new sensory studio for children at Sense TouchBase Pears, our centre in Birmingham.
Mondelez International
Staff at Mondelez International in Birmingham have volunteered and fundraised for Sense in lots of different ways over the years. In return, we’ve provided BSL training for staff at Cadbury World.
Mike Hobin, Area PCM at Mondelez International, says: “We got in touch with Sense to look at volunteering and fundraising activities and over the years have contributed to Tea Parties, Shop Swaps, event stewarding and more. We have also met some fantastic people and gained a lasting relationship with the local community.”
Mazars
In 2018, partnering with the accountancy firm, Mazars, we achieved a new Guinness World Record for the world’s biggest tactile signing lesson. Mazars staff also took part in an epic cycling challenge covering 1,000 miles to raise money for Sense, starting in Glasgow and ending up by Tower Bridge in London!
Want to find out more about partnering with Sense?
From payroll giving to employee volunteering initiatives, there are lots of ways for us to work together.