How we’re working with Kidney Care UK to support customers with chronic kidney disease

We’re committed to caring for our customers and our communities. And that includes working with like-minded partners to help raise awareness of and tackle some of the root causes of our customers’ energy affordability issues.

One such partner is Kidney Care UK and for almost two years, E.ON Next has been working with Kidney Care UK to ensure vulnerable customers living with chronic kidney disease (CKD) can benefit from vital additional support that can help them to live better with the condition.

Kidney Care UK is the UK’s leading kidney patient support charity and, together with E.ON Next, the ground-breaking partnership set out to make an immediate and tangible difference to the quality of life, financial welfare and wellbeing of E.ON Next’s customers with CKD.

The partnership is already having a direct impact on some of the most vulnerable people across the UK, predominantly in some of our core heartlands such as Nottingham, Leicester, Coventry, Bolton and the North East.

Some of the key highlights of E.ON Next’s work with Kidney Care UK so far include:

• Helping customers identify and claim more than £441,000 of previously unclaimed welfare benefits (largely through Personal Independence Payments or PIPs) for people with CKD.
• Providing more than £101,000 in immediate hardship grants for patients across our core regions.
• Supporting more than 6,600 patients directly with intensive welfare and wellbeing support.
• Delivering free-to-the-patient counselling for more than 550 kidney patients through more than 2,400 sessions of emotional and wellbeing support for those facing acute challenges.
• Running 31 intensive training sessions for E.ON’s Priority Service Register (PSR) teams so that they can better deal with incoming enquiries from customers living with CKD and those with kidney failure, ensuring that E.ON Next colleagues can provide the best possible support to these customers.
• Directly engaging with more than 2,300 patients and households about PSR awareness.
• Delivering two renal unit visits to kidney patients on dialysis in Nottingham to highlight the partnership and how together we can provide welfare and wellbeing support to those facing immediate crisis.

Ramona Vlasiu, Chief Operating Officer, E.ON Next, said: “We’re proud to work with Kidney Care UK, providing support for customers who are living with chronic kidney disease, as well as raising awareness of the signs and risks of developing kidney problems in the future.

“This partnership forms an important part of the range of support we have available to help our customers, and we tailor that support to help meet our customers’ individual needs. Our support includes grants through our E.ON Next Energy Fund, home improvements to help lower energy use and bills, and financial advice including benefits checks – all aimed at helping ease the burden for our most vulnerable customers.

“Our message is clear – if you’re struggling with your energy bills and feel you need additional support, get in touch to see how we can help.”

As well as contacting customers affected by CKD directly about the partnership and the support available, Kidney Care UK and E.ON Next have worked together to implement a unique industry-charity referral network which enables E.ON Next’s vulnerability teams to directly refer customers living with CKD to Kidney Care UK for specialist support and intervention. Introduced at the end of January 2024, this system has enabled more than 50 patients to receive intensive, hands-on support from Kidney Care UK, making transformational differences to these households.

And in order to fit in with patients’ treatment schedules, we’ve hosted joint drop-in sessions at dialysis and pre-dialysis units in Nottingham and Derby, so patients can receive direct support from both E.ON Next and Kidney Care UK, with more planned in London, Bolton and the North East over the coming months.

Laurie Cuthbert, Director of Fundraising, Marketing and Communications at Kidney Care UK, said: “In the two years since we’ve been working with E.ON Next, we have supported more than 6,600 kidney patients across the target regions of our partnership – the North East, Bolton, Coventry, Leicester and Nottingham – helping them to secure £441,000 in unclaimed welfare benefits and directly providing £101,559 in hardship grants.

“As a charity that exists to ensure no one faces kidney disease alone, Kidney Care UK is delighted to partner with E.ON Next to advance our shared mission to support the most vulnerable households across the UK affected by CKD. Whether through our expert, free counselling service supporting hundreds of households affected by the condition or through our Patient Support & Advocacy team on the ground speaking to kidney patients in community settings, this partnership continues to have tangible benefits. We look forward to doing even more together over the coming years.”

Working together, Kidney Care UK and E.ON Next aim to support as many of CKD patients and their families as possible, while building greater awareness of CKD across our heartland areas.

By working in partnership, we’ll continue to raise awareness of our shared, complementary financial and psychosocial support services, as well as generating a significantly greater number of PSR sign ups and moving vulnerable customers onto more appropriate tariff where possible.

About CKD

• Today, 7.2 million people across the UK are living with CKD and 3.5 million of these live with advanced CKD. It is estimated that by 2036, the number of people living with advanced CKD will rise to 4.2 million people.
• There are up to 45,000 premature deaths in the UK every year due to CKD – that's enough people to fill the Royal Albert Hall nine times over.
• Black, Asian and minority ethnic communities are five times more likely to develop CKD that other groups.
• Right now, more than 70,000 people in the UK are being treated for kidney failure (also known as stage 5 CKD, where kidney function is less than 15%). Every day about 20 people in the UK will develop kidney failure.

About Kidney Care UK’s #BloodyAmazingKidneys campaign

Kidney Care UK has launched a national awareness campaign aimed at those most at risk of developing CKD – #BloodyAmazingKidneys. The campaign has been created to reach the general public, one million of whom are living with CKD but don’t even know they’ve got it.

The mass awareness campaign urges people to check if they are at risk of CKD by taking Kidney Care UK’s five minute ‘Kidney Health Checker’. Based on the answers provided, people will either be told they’re at lower risk of developing CKD or that they’re at higher risk, and then tells people what steps to take next.

For more information about support available for E.ON Next customers, including the partnership with Kidney Care UK and for more about the PSR, visit E.ON Next’s website.