An offender rehabilitation charity has been awarded a £5m grant by the Julia Rausing Trust. 

One Small Thing, which had an income of £3.4m in the year to the end of March 2024, has been given the grant for its Hope Street residential project in Hampshire, a pilot scheme that provides an alternative to prison for women and enables them to stay with their children. 

The core funding will support operation of the project and enable the charity to share what it has learned and explore opportunities for it to be replicated in other areas of England and Wales. 

The Julia Rausing Trust was established after the death of the philanthropist Julia Rausing last year with the aim of donating £100m to UK charities in its first year. 

Rausing, who set up the Julia and Hans Rausing Trust with her husband in 2014, died in April after an extended illness.

One Small Thing received previous grants from the Julia and Hans Rausing Trust of £400,000 in 2022 and £1.4m in 2019. 

The charity was invited to apply for the latest grant by the Julia Rausing Trust, having been identified by the foundation’s research into charitable initiatives in the criminal justice sector. 

Claire Hubberstey, chief executive of One Small Thing, said: “None of our achievements to date would have been possible without the invaluable support of Julia Rausing and her husband Hans. 

“We are now in a position to scale our work and deliver much needed change. With a new government in power and a national action plan due on reducing women’s imprisonment, we have an important opportunity to use our learning to achieve real, lasting change.”