The Reed Foundation donates £10,000 to Hypo Hounds

The Reed Foundation, part of the Reed Group, is donating £10,000 every week, for a year, to support 52 different charities, chosen by its employees. This means that by April 2025, the Reed Foundation will have donated an incredible £520,000. The initiative is a celebration of Reed’s 65th year of business and its Founder, Sir Alec’s 90th birthday.

Every week, a Reed employee is drawn randomly to nominate a charity of their choice to receive the incredible donation. This time around, it was animal-loving Natalie Wilson – a recruitment specialist based in Reed’s Maidstone office, who opted to support the charity which has prevented 38,325 hospital admissions with its highly-skilled alert dogs.

Speaking about her reasons for nominating the charity, Natalie said: “I absolutely love animals and donate regularly to animal charities. But when I was awarded the 10k from the Reed Foundation to donate to a charity of my choice, I knew where it needed to go.

“My colleague Kylie and I had the absolute pleasure of meeting Jane Pearman, CEO of Hypo Hounds, last summer, at a Chamber of Commerce sponsored event held at their headquarters. At the event, we met Scooby the alert dog. In 2014, Scooby saved Jane’s daughter Sophie’s life when she was just four months old. He woke Jane up as Sophie’s blood sugar level dropped. Without Scooby raising the alarm, Sophie would not be alive today. As a result, in 2016, Hypo Hounds were born.

“The story melted my heart and since its inception, the charity has prevented 54 other families from losing their children.”

Hypo Hounds train dogs to detect and alert to the dangerous changes in their Type 1 Diabetic owner’s blood sugars. By alerting their owners or their families to these changes in blood sugars, Hypo Hounds can help to prevent potentially life-threatening hypoglycaemic attacks. The charity is predominantly a paediatric charity, assisting Type 1 Diabetic children who have no hypo awareness, enabling them to gain independence and freedom. The charity is also able to help adults if they have a clinical need.

Jane Pearman, CEO of Hypo Hounds, said: "The wonderfully kind donation to Hypo Hounds by Reed Specialist Recruitment enabled Hypo Hounds to continue with their amazing puppy programme in 2024. Our amazing dogs who are now in their advanced stages of their training are in the process of being matched to their child client and will be going on to become lifesaving Diabetic Alert Assistance Dogs for them. We are so grateful to Reed for their support".