- Area:
- East of England
- Programme:
- Supporting Change and Impact
- Release date:
- 20 3 2012
Charities across the East of England, including Youth Talk and Care Network Cambridgeshire who are struggling with the effects of public funding cuts have been given a Lottery lifeline today.
Big Lottery Fund (BIG) has awarded nine of its grant-holders in the East of England an extra year’s worth of funding to enable them to continue their work through the tough economic environment. Grants of up to £10,000 have also been awarded to a further 39 projects to help them review their work and find ways of becoming more sustainable.
Projects sharing in the funding - totalling over £1.1million - provide vital services to some of the most vulnerable groups in society. Many face an uncertain future as their Lottery funding comes to an end, compounded by increasing demand from beneficiaries as other services are forced to scale back or close down, and welfare reforms begin to take effect.
Youth Talk Limited works with young people with mental health problems, providing one-to-one counselling and psychotherapy sessions in St Albans for those aged 19-25 years old. It has received £79,925 from BIG and plans to explore the potential to create a community social enterprise that generates income to support their service.
Joyce Wellings, Director of Youth Talk, said: “The BIG Lottery Fund has understood the situation we are facing. Now we can work at pursuing alternative sources of income for the future whilst maintaining the service to the community. It could make the difference between the collapse of the service and its survival into the future building on 15 years of work with over 1,700 young people.
“Without this funding we would be unable to take any new referrals and drop immediately from 60 sessions a week to 30 or less. There is a global awareness of the extent of mental ill health in young people. We have been given the chance to be creative about change in order to conserve what we know is needed.”
Care Network Cambridgeshire provides practical help and support for people following discharge from hospital. Services include collecting prescriptions, providing company, doing shopping and household tasks. The project has also developed community car schemes, lunch clubs and mobile warden schemes. It received £84,566 to help secure its future.
Ruth McCallum, Chief Officer at Care Network Cambridgeshire, said: "Today’s funding will enable Care Network Cambridgeshire to develop a streamlined model of service so it can respond to future local authority funding availability. A senior community development worker will measure the impact of the project in greater detail, testing working models in different areas of the county. The funding will also enable the project to continue for another year due to high demand and the significant impact it has had on the lives of older people.
"We are really looking forward to the opportunity to evaluate the impact of our work and to apply lessons learnt in the Fens to other areas of the county."
The funding is part of a Big Lottery Fund initiative called Supporting Change & Impact, which totals over £70m and is designed to help Lottery-funded good causes cope with the developing impact of public funding cuts. The National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO) estimates that voluntary and community groups will experience a reduction in public funding of up to £3.3 billion by 2015.
Sara Betsworth, Big Lottery Fund Head of Region for the East of England, said: “This funding supports our grant-holders as they struggle to provide vitally important services to thousands of the most vulnerable in our society. The Big Lottery Fund is only too aware of the increasing pressures facing organisations as the public funding cuts take effect.
“This package gives funding support for an extra year to organisations that are making a significant difference to the lives of people they help and allows groups some breathing space to plan for the future.”
As part of the £70m support package, BIG also added over £25m to its two main open grants programme in England, Reaching Communities and Awards for All, to fund an additional 1200 charitable and community projects, and has awarded almost £20 million to partner organisations that distribute or manage funding on its behalf to further support their grant holders. These include MIND, Groundwork, and Age UK, who deliver funding as part of BIG’s Well-being and Changing Spaces grants programmes.
A full list of projects awarded an extra year’s funding
A list of projects receiving up to £10,000 to review and plan for the future
Further Information
Big Lottery Fund Press Office: 020 7211 1888
Out of hours media contact: 07867 500 572
Full details of the Big Lottery Fund programmes and grant awards are available on the website: www.biglotteryfund.org.uk
Ask BIG a question here: https://ask.biglotteryfund.org.uk
Follow BIG on Twitter: www.twitter.com/BigLotteryFund #BIGlf
Find BIG on facebook: www.facebook.com/BigLotteryFund
Notes to Editors
- The Big Lottery Fund (BIG), the largest distributor of National Lottery good cause funding, is responsible for giving out 46% of the money raised for good causes by the National Lottery.
- BIG is committed to bringing real improvements to communities and the lives of people most in need and has been rolling out grants to health, education, environment and charitable causes across the UK. Since June 2004 BIG has awarded over £4.4bn.
- The Fund was formally established by Parliament on 1 December 2006.
- Since the National Lottery began in 1994, 28p from every pound spent by the public has gone to good causes. As a result, over £27 billion has now been raised and more than 370,000 grants awarded across arts, sport, heritage, charities, health, education and the environment.
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