Catherine Dauntesy Foxton

1878

Criteria to Qualify

 The Foxton Dispensary is a charitable trust which exists to relieve in cases of need, for residents in the Urban District of Poulton-le-Fylde and in the County Borough of Blackpool, and who are sick, convalescent, disabled, handicapped or infirm, by providing for items, services or facilities which are calculated to alleviate the suffering or assist the recovery of such persons in such cases but are not readily available to them from other sources.

There are some restrictions and it is a matter of judgement for the Trustees to determine whether a case meets the criteria.

The Charity Commissioners have advised that, "Trustees need to take care not to use the charity's funds simply to replace State benefits. To use the charity's funds in this way would not make the beneficiaries any better off; it would simply mean that they were getting from a charity what they had previously been receiving from the State. In effect the charity would be relieving the State, not the beneficiary".

(Charity Commission Booklet CC4, paragraph 21)

It is recognised that "People may qualify for assistance from a charity whether or not they are eligible for State benefits. Some people who already receive their full entitlement of State benefits may need additional help. Equally, some people who are not entitled to State benefits may sometimes need help because of particular circumstances (where, say, they encounter some gap in an acceptable standard of living which they would find it difficult to fill from resources available to them)".

(Paragraph 5)