Identity area
Type of entity
Authorized form of name
Parallel form(s) of name
Standardized form(s) of name according to other rules
Other form(s) of name
Identifiers for corporate bodies
Description area
Dates of existence
History
The King's Fund was established in 1897 as the Prince of Wales Hospital Fund for London for the purpose of raising money for the Voluntary Hospitals within a seven mile radius from Charing Cross. A letter by the Prince of Wales was published in 'The Times' on 6 February 1897 inviting subscriptions in celebration of the 60th anniversary of the reign of Queen Victoria.
The first distribution of grants by the Fund took place in 1897/1898 and amounted to £57,000 however, it was the intention of the Prince and the founding members of the first General Council that the Fund woud become a permanent body with sufficient captial to produce an annual income for distribution. On 1 January 1902 the Fund was renamed King Edward's Hospital Fund for London and in 1907 the Fund was incorporated by an Act of Parliament.
As the amount available for distribution grew so did the remit of the Fund. The initial seven mile limit from Charing Cross was extended in 1924 to nine miles and in 1940 to the whole of the Metropolitan Region. The Fund also began to include Convescent Homes in its annual distributions.
Thanks to its financial success, the Fund soon began to have a considerable influence on the work and administration of the London voluntary hospitals and its activities soon diversified into inspecting hospitals and encouraging a more rational distribution of health services across the growing expanse of the city, for example they were instrumental in the move of King's College Hospital to Camberwell, South London. The King's Fund also began to undertake a number of pan-London roles, for example by opening and operating a service of emergency admissions to hospitals and encouraging combined fund raising appeals. The Fund as part of the conditions of its grants required hospitals to submit particulars of their accounts and this led to the introduction of a uniform system of hosptial accounts. They also began to be the representing body of the voluntary hospitals in debates about health and welfare policy.
At the end of the First World War many voluntary hospitals were in considerable difficulty owing to lack of resources. A Hospital Commission was set up for the country to administer a government grant, with King Edward's Fund acting as the coordinating body for the London area. As a result, the Fund overhauled its own constitution into five main committees, Finance, Distribution, Hospital Economy, Revenue and Management. Several special committees were established in the 1920s to investigate various matters, including pensions schemes for nurses and hospital staff, provision of ambulances, and for road casualties.
The establishment of the National Health Service (NHS) in 1948 led to a reappraisal of the work of the King's Fund. Instead of giving maintenance grants to the now tax-funded health service, it concentrated its resources on developing good practice in the NHS and opened a number of new services to provide training, learning and sharing opportunities for NHS staff including the Division of Hospital Facilities (opened 1948, became The Hospital Centre), the College for Ward Sisters (opened 1949), the Catering Advisory Service (opened 1950), th Hospital Administrative Staff College and the School of Hospital Catering (opened 1951) and the Staff College for Matrons (1953). The Fund's colleges were amalgamated in 1968 to become the 'King's Fund College' and in 1997 a change and leadership centre was established. Leadership development is still continued under the Leadership and Development Team.
Post NHS the Fund also became the home of numerous development projects to improve the quality of health care and opened a specialist health services library in Camden Town. The range of projects ranged enormously from investigations into the use of disposal goods in hospital wards through to the investigation into the design of the hospital bed-stead in the 1960s. In the 1980s, the King's Fund established a unit to analyse health policy issues and a service offering organisational audit to health services. It was also in this era that the Fund widened the scope of its activities to look at social care and public health becoming an influential organisation in health policy, pioneering the development of patient choice in the NHS, of partnerships between health and social care, and of the arts in health. It also began working to tackle health inequalities in London working with the Greater London Authority and other health agencies as well as continuing its work analysing national health policy and developing new ways of working in the NHS and social care services.
In 2008 the Fund was granted a Royal Charter which in effect gave a new set of governance arrangements, which include a modern version of the original objectives. Allowing the Fund to remain an independent and expert body able to exercise influence and use ideas to change health care.