EPLC receives grant to create 3-5 year strategy

The Early Pregnancy Loss Coalition is incredibly grateful to the Victorian Women’s Trust and Deborah Ganderton and John Henry Sub-Fund for a grant to support the Coalition’s strategic planning for next year. We are proud to be the newly-established fund’s first grant recipient.

Victorian Women’s Trust Executive Director Mary Crooks AO writes, “We are proud and excited to make this grant. It is precisely what we had in mind in terms of the kind of strategic foresight and action necessary for achieving positive social change.”

The VWT provided the following background to funders, which we are so pleased to share below.

At the Victorian Women’s Trust, we became acutely aware of the issue of early pregnancy loss a four years ago, through contact with journalist Isy Oderberg. The more we listened – to Isy’s personal experience of miscarriage, the in-depth investigative research she had already undertaken and her proposal to write a book on the issue - the more we wanted to do to help bring about much-needed, positive change.

The issue readily came within the remit of our grant making entity, the Victorian Women’s Benevolent Trust (VWBT). To complete the research and finish the published work, Isabelle needed resource support. She had childcare costs to meet as well as being keen for an organisational base where she could talk with people and consolidate her thinking.

We needed little convincing. In 2021, the Trustees of the VWBT made a Targeted Impact Grant of $50k to the Jean Hailes Foundation to provide the kind of base that would offer Isy practical support as well as meeting her childcare needs in bringing this pioneering book to fruition.

The book is published

Her book, Hard to Bear, was published by Ultimo Press in 2023, to great acclaim:

Funny, wise and forensically researched. Hard to Bear is brilliant.

Samantha Maiden, Political Editor, news.com.au

Isabelle Oderberg has managed to present us with a work of great care, while confronting us with the experiences of women who, having suffered deeply, are sometimes punished further. We all need to read this book and shift the ways in which we value all life, old and the new.

Tony Birch, author of Dark as Last Night and The White Girl.

Action for change

Once published, Hard to Bear became the lightning rod for change. Isy co-founded The Early Pregnancy Loss Coalition (EPLC), along with Dr Jade Bilardi (Miscarriage Australia and Monash University) and Associate Professor Melanie Keep (University of Sydney). 

An estimated 1 in 4 pregnancies end in miscarriage, and around 285 miscarriages occur every day (Miscarriage Australia). With this in mind, the EPLC’s mission is to advocate for improved care and support for people affected by early pregnancy loss (miscarriage) and their families. 

Currently, miscarriage related care, support and research is grossly underfunded in Australia. So, the EPLC set itself up as a registered charity and started to build a collective voice to Government and advocate for critical changes needed to address the current gaps in patient care, support and funding in Australia. 

A Federal budget first

The EPLC means business. In a short and intense period of lobbying, the EPLC was influential in the Albanese Government’s 2024 Budget commitment of $13.5 million towards families and individuals who have experienced early pregnancy loss.

At least $7 million of these funds is earmarked for awareness raising, education, and support for miscarriage for women and their families, as well as to support healthcare professionals. An additional $6.5 million has been earmarked for the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, who will undertake a scoping study of miscarriages and sexual reproductive health. 

This is the first time any Australian government has offered untied, dedicated funding to miscarriage. It won’t fix everything, but it’s a huge start…Chair EPLC, Isy Oderberg.

The EPLC is not stopping here.

It is ambitious. It now seeks to become a strong collective national voice in advocating for further positive developments around miscarriage, its impacts on families and the changes that are needed across health services.

Strategic planning: enter the Deb Ganderton and John Henry Sub-Fund

The EPLC understands the importance of good planning, of being able to move forward with clarity and sureness, especially when funds are limited.

To this end, the EPLC applied to the VWBT as part of its Sub-Fund grants round, to fund a weekend summit so that the EPLC Board, including interstate members, could create their 3–5-year plan, including the development of a national miscarriage strategy for Australia.

We felt that the rationale for the grant sat well with the purposes of the Deborah Ganderton and John Henry Sub-Fund, funding projects that develop capacity for strategic foresight and strategic planning which advances full gender equality.

At its meeting on 1 October 2024, VWBT Trustees approved a grant of $9,700 to the Early Pregnancy Loss Coalition to hold its planning summit, enabling the organisation to consolidate and expand its influential work in the years to come.

Stay tuned! We have countless stories of the power of this sort of grant making. It is also a cause for celebration that this is the first grant to have been made from the Deborah Ganderton and John Henry Sub-Fund. Strategic foresight at its best, creating positive change and making a lasting difference.

You can be part of making change through grants like this first one. Tax-deductible contributions to the Deborah Ganderton and John Henry Sub-Fund help grow the capital held in the Fund. The more capital, the greater the amount of interest earned on the investment. The greater the level of interest, the greater the Fund’s capacity to make annual grants.

Mary Crooks AO
Executive Director
Victorian Women’s Trust