Emergency Ferry travel is for people who meet the following criteria.

1) Island child needs to attend mainland hospital or unit for immediate (within 24 hours) care and does not qualify for ambulance assistance.

2) Island child is an inpatient in a mainland hospital and has been diagnosed with a long term or life limiting illness or disability, and parents need to travel to be with them.

3) Newborn/Premature baby born to Isle of Wight family has been transferred to a mainland hospital and parents need to travel to be with the Infant.

Referrals must be made by a medical professional caring for the child and they must make the referral on the information that is available to them ensuring that the above criteria is met.

Referrals can be made by community nurse, children’s ward Nurse, Neonatal Nurse.

General Travel Grants are available to Island Children who have been diagnosed with a long term illness, medical problem or disability.

You must contact us with as much notice as possible before your scheduled appointment and fill in our grant application form .

There is no need for a medical referral in this instance but we may contact medical professionals during the decision process.

We will cover the cost of Ferry costs, overnight accommodation if necessary and in some cases petrol.

We will only cover travel where there is no other grant available i.e. tax credit travel reclaim, we may signpost you to other grants if this is the case but may still cover any shortfall 

Each case is considered on its own merit and we will always help where we can.

Equipment and Therapy grants are available to Island Children who have been diagnosed with a long term illness or disability.

Equipment and Therapy Grants are given only when we have a good amount of funding available this is due to the emergency nature of some of our travel grants which take priority.

To apply for a grant please e mail us giving some detail of what you would like and we will get back to you asap.

On some occasions we may decide that we can only cover some of the cost of the item, in this instance we will always try to signpost you to someone else who may be able to help fund the rest of the item.

We will only pay funds direct to the supplier or therapy centre.