There are two schemes offering financial support:

  • Financial support for carers attending work-related events taking place outside of College
  • Financial support for College-based events relevant to career development held outside of core hours or during half term holidays.

Further details about these schemes are listed below.

Financial support for carers attending work-related events

The College recognises that for those of you with caring responsibilities,Pound coins attending events such as conferences, work-related training days and similar work-related development opportunities is an important part of developing and maintaining your career.  The College also understands that attending such events can cause an additional financial burden if you need to make alternative care arrangements.

To help alleviate some of this burden, the College offers a scheme which may entitle you to a small grant of up to £250 if you have caring responsibilities. Your manager will be required to assess whether you qualify for this grant, which will be given in order to help meet the costs of care arrangements while you attend events in line with those mentioned above, either in the UK or internationally.

The College reserves the right to vary or discontinue the arrangement. It should be noted that Carers’ grants are provided on a discretionary basis and do not form part of your terms of employment.

Grant application

What the grant can fund

The grant can be used to fund additional/alternative care arrangements for your dependent to either stay at home while you travel, or to fund travel and associated care costs allowing the dependant to travel with you.

Note:

A dependant is a partner, child or parent, or someone who lives with you as part of your family. This could be, for example, an elderly aunt or Carer and older person grandparent. It does not include tenants or boarders who may be living in your family home.

You may make an application for this grant if the following conditions apply:
  • You have caring responsibilities and nobody else at your home can provide the care.
  • No alternative source of funding is available, e.g. from the conference/training etc. organiser or by other means, such as from research grant funding.  Where relevant it is your responsibility to provide evidence that no alternative source of funding is available.
  • The event/conference location is external to Imperial College.
  • The grant is to cover costs outside of the routine everyday care costs you normally incur.

Financial support for carers attending College-based events relevant to career development

For College-based events related to career development that are held outside of core hours or during half term holidays, a seperate scheme is available.

As part of ongoing work to make Imperial more family-friendly and therefore more inclusive of staff with caring responsibilities, there has been a conscious effort to shift staff events (e.g. public lectures, seminars, workshops, meals with visiting seminar speakers) to more family-friendly dates and times of the day.

This is not always practical, meaning that sometimes events are held late in the day or during school half-term holidays. On such occasions, we aim to facilitate inclusion of employees with caring responsibilities by offering financial support to offset the additional cost of providing care (e.g. babysitting).

  • The scheme is open to all College staff and PhD students.
  • The scheme applies only to events held outside core working hours (09:00-17:00) or in designated school half-term holidays. It excludes events held during other school holidays (Christmas, Easter, Summer), for which staff might reasonably be expected to have care provision in place.
  • The scheme applies only to events held on one of the Imperial College campuses. (See elsewhere on this webpage for information on grants for caring-related expenses when attending conferences, workshops etc.  held outside College.)
  • Expenses can only be claimed for events that are directly relevant to the career development of the applicant, as determined by the member of staff’s line manager/supervisor.
  • Funds will be awarded as an expense claim (on a standard short application form and supported by a receipt), authorised by the relevant Head of Department or their delegate.
  • Awards are to be paid by the organisers of the events and are expected to be made at a level of £10 per hour up to a maximum of £50.