For more than 30 years, we’ve been here to make sure disabled and terminally ill children get the chance to thrive.
Newlife’s mission is to do all we can to ensure disabled and terminally ill children get the best quality of life possible. We provide life-changing specialist disability equipment as grants and loans to thousands of children each year. As the UK’s only charity providing emergency equipment loans to disabled children who have reached crisis point and urgently need help, we offer a lifeline to those children and their families who just cannot wait.
And that’s not all.
Our Nurse Helpline offers essential support to families in need, providing vital information, signposting to key services – or just being someone to listen.
We support adults with additional needs with volunteering and employment opportunities, providing a means for career development.
Through pioneering research, we have forged vital advances in medical science. And through advocacy and campaigning, we have given disabled children a voice, even being instrumental in changing laws for the benefit of the families we serve.
Find out more about our services here: Newlife - Get Support
Newlife timeline:
1991: The Birth Defects Foundation was registered as a charity, with a main focus on supporting research related to the understanding, prevention and treatment of birth defects.
1993: The charity supported the setting up of a separate trading company to recycle and raise funds from the management of corporate products donated to the charity.
1996: The charity’s Newlife Superstore opened in Cannock, selling donated goods from high street retailers to raise funds.
2000: By the turn of the new millennium, the support groups offered by BDF had evolved to include a free Nurse Helpline.
2005: The equipment grant service was launched, helping its 100th child within months.
2008: We changed our name to Newlife the Foundation for Disabled Children to reflect the expansion of our services.
2008: Our Volunteer Opportunity Centre opened in Cannock, providing a dedicated space for individuals and groups to volunteer their time to support Newlife.
2011: The ‘Just Can’t Wait’ emergency loan service was launched, to deliver essential equipment to children in crisis within days
2016: Our trading company and charity placed all their assets into the new registered charity called Newlife the Charity for Disabled Children, combining all of our focus under one umbrella.
2021: Newlife Online was launched to enable shoppers across the UK to shop with Newlife.
2022: The largest store in Newlife’s portfolio opened in High Wycombe, taking the number of stores to ten around England and Wales.
2023: The 20,000th equipment grant was awarded - an incredible achievement.
Working with major brands and retailers to make a difference
Ahead of its time, Newlife was forging brand partnerships and providing a unique retail experience with sustainability and a drive to help disabled children and their families at its heart.
Through Newlife Online and our ten retail stores we work with stock partners to recycle donated stock, giving a ‘New Life’ to clothes which would otherwise end up in landfill. Profits from our retail stores go directly towards funding our charity aims, enabling us to help more and more children each year.
Brand new stock donated by our brand partners is processed and any branding removed as necessary by dedicated Newlife staff and volunteers, before being sent to our online store and ten retail stores across the UK to be sold at discounted prices.
With environmental sustainability and social impact as the driving forces, we turn their end-of-life, excess and waste stock into positive change.
Find some of the brand partners we work with here.
