About us
Changing Faces is here for everyone with a scar, mark or condition on their face or body.
We provide life-changing mental health, wellbeing and skin camouflage services. We work to transform understanding and acceptance of visible difference, and campaign to reduce prejudice and discrimination.
We won’t stop until everyone with a visible difference or disfigurement is supported and respected.
To read or listen to real stories by people affected by a visible difference, their parents and families visit: https://www.changingfaces.org.uk/real-stories/
Strategy
“I really don’t know if I would be the person I am today without Changing Faces and being able to meet other people with a facial difference. Knowing I’m not on my own, and hopefully helping others feel that they are not on their own means a great deal to me. Being able to meet other people that are going through what I have to deal with on a daily basis has been amazing. They understand. I’m not on my own. It’s like a weight has been lifted. I am not someone who looks different, I am just me.”
Marcus, age 16, who has a facial cleft and cleft palate.
Our strategic goals are:
Everyone across the UK with a visible difference or disfigurement will have access to the support they need.
We will significantly increase everyone’s understanding and acceptance of visible difference and disfigurement, and reduce prejudice and discrimination.
We aim to achieve this through:
Growing the reach of our support, focusing on geographical coverage and reaching those who currently don’t access support.
Developing new forms of support that allow significantly wider reach while maintaining effectiveness.
Focus on engaging health professionals, and over time on health professional education as resources become available.
Directing our campaigning activities on the themes of the strategy (increasing public understanding and reducing negative behaviours), and over time growing these.
Investing in fundraising to enable us to grow and achieve all of this.
Finances
Our annual income is around £1.3m, raised mainly from voluntary sources including trusts and foundations, major donors, individual giving and corporate fundraising. We also receive some NHS funding for our skin camouflage service. As for all charities, it is a challenge in the current environment to generate the funding we need for our activities, and our income strategy aims to spread the risk through further diversification.
We ended the 2023/24 year with a small surplus of income over expenditure. View our annual accounts.
Equity, diversity and inclusion statement
As a charity whose mission and vision are to build a fairer and more equal society for everyone, we are absolutely committed to being a fair, open and inclusive organisation delivering services that consider the needs of all members of our community. Our clients and community are welcomed irrespective of faith, race, culture, nationality or sexual orientation. We monitor protected characteristics such as gender, ethnicity, disability and age. We are also looking to introduce questions to monitor socio-economic background.
People with visible differences can face deep discrimination and challenges because of both their appearance and other protected characteristics such as race and disability. Our services and campaigns look to recognise the intersectional challenges and impacts of living with other protected characteristics and visible difference on mental health, wellbeing and discrimination.
Equality, diversity and inclusion were central to the development of our strategy, and inclusion is one of our organisation’s values. We continue to work hard to embed this across everything we do, whether that is recruitment of staff or campaigners or working to ensure our services are as accessible as possible.