Daphne Jackson Trust — the UK's National Return-to-Research Fellowship Scheme

The Daphne Jackson Trust is a UK charity, founded in 1992 in memory of Daphne Jackson — the UK's first female professor of physics — to stop skilled researchers being permanently lost from the workforce after a career break of two or more years for caring, health or family reasons. The overwhelming majority of Fellows are women returning after maternity or caring leave.
Each Daphne Jackson Fellowship funds two years of part-time, supervised research at a host university or institution, combined with a retraining programme and individual mentoring, jointly funded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), learned societies, charities, industry and the host institution. Originally limited to science, engineering and technology, the scheme was widened in 2020 to all research disciplines and in 2021 added a Research Technical Professional Fellowship stream.
Since 1992 the Trust has supported over 500 Fellows. According to its own published impact data, more than 70% of former Fellows remain research-active five to ten years after their fellowship, around 60% continue at the same host institution, and alumni have gone on to secure more than £87 million in follow-on research funding — equivalent to roughly £3.50 raised for every £1 invested in a Fellowship — and produced over 2,200 peer-reviewed publications. The Trust estimates this has preserved over 2,400 cumulative years of research training and experience that would otherwise have been lost to the sector.
Caveats: the headline outcome figures (retention rate, funding leverage, publication counts) are drawn from the Trust's own alumni surveys and impact reporting rather than an independent randomised evaluation, and response/survivorship bias in alumni surveys cannot be ruled out. The scheme is also small relative to the scale of the 'leaky pipeline' problem it addresses (around 25 new Fellowships per year).

Read the full analysis: https://daphnejackson.org/fellows/impact-and-outcomes/