Lottery reaches out with bereavement support

Area:

South West England

Programme:

Reaching Communities

Release date:

20 2 2007

All together £400,000 in grants has been ploughed by BIG into South West community groups.

The Ottery St Mary District Help Scheme supports the recently bereaved by holding regular group meetings, providing one-to-one informal counselling and helping with tasks like shopping, transport, hot meals and paperwork.

With its £30,276 grant, the scheme will aim to at least double the number of people it reaches. Separate fortnightly group meetings for people at different stages of the grieving process will be held, more volunteers recruited and new information packs printed. Support will also be extended to families of terminally ill people.

Pat Lane, Coordinator, Ottery St Mary District Help Scheme, said: “We’re thrilled at this grant. It will make a big difference to the lives of many who otherwise would not know where to turn for someone to talk to, and for help with day-to-day matters that can be so hard to deal with when you are grieving.

“The bereaved are very often isolated in rural Devon. We will make them feel a part of the community and provide a social network of other people who are also on their own. We would love some to end up being volunteers, thus giving others the same help they themselves received.”

Big Lottery Fund Head of South West England Mark Cotton said: “The bereavement service in Ottery St Mary has worked well for several years but its organisers know that, given more time and money, they can reach more suffering people. Resources to do that will now be at hand thanks to the Reaching Communities programme, which was set up to fund just this type of initiative.”

In Chittlehamholt, new playground equipment for youngsters aged four to 14 years old will be installed in the village’s playing field to complete an overhaul of the recreation area.

The Chittlehamholt, Warkleigh and Satterleigh Parish Council has been granted £10,300 towards buying a new multi-purpose climbing frame that will include a slide, climbing net and monkey bars.

Swings and other equipment have already been installed for younger and older children to replace an outdated playground built in the 1970s. Children asked for the new equipment when they were surveyed six years ago about their play needs. The next nearest playground is in a village six miles away and public transport is poor in the rural and isolated area.

In other grants for the South West, the Music and Dance Education Trust has been awarded £60,509 to hold music and dance workshops to bring different generations together in West Cornwall. Also in Cornwall, the Hayle Day Care Centre will have more space to dish up affordable hot lunches to elderly people thanks to a £50,000 grant that will double the size of its dining room. Meanwhile, the Weston-super-Mare & District Credit Union has been awarded £185,000 to expand its services across North Somerset.

The Reaching Communities programme delivers grants of up to £500,000 over five years to schemes that offer people better chances in life, build strong communities, improve urban and rural environments and promote healthy activities.

Further information

Big Lottery Fund Press Office: 020 7211 1888
Out of hours contact: 07867 500 572
Public Enquiries Line: 08454 102030
Textphone: 0845 6021 659
Full details of the Big Lottery Fund programmes and grant awards are available on the website: www.biglotteryfund.org.uk

Notes to Editors

• The Big Lottery Fund rolls out close to £2 million in Lottery good cause money every 24 hours, which together with other Lottery distributors means that across the UK most people are within a few miles of a Lottery-funded project.
• The Big Lottery Fund, the largest of the National Lottery good cause distributors, has been rolling out grants to health, education, environment and charitable causes across the UK since its inception in June 2004.
• On 1 December 2006 the Big Lottery Fund was officially established by Parliament and at the same time assumed the residual responsibilities of the dissolved National Lottery Charities Board (Community Fund) the New Opportunities Fund, and the Millennium Commission. The Fund is building on the experience and best practice of the merged bodies to simplify funding in those areas where they overlap and to ensure Lottery funding provides the best possible value for money.
• Reaching Communities is part of the Big Lottery Fund’s portfolio of new programmes. Following an intense and comprehensive process of consultation with stakeholders and the general public over the last year, the Fund has undertaken to distribute 60-70% of its funding to the third sector.  At least one-third of BIG funding will be demand-led and lightly prescribed. In England, this will amount to at least £600 million over the period 2005-2009. This commitment will be met from a variety of funding streams, including, Reaching Communities, Awards for All, part of the Young People’s Fund, Community Buildings, Advice Services and the People’s Millions.
• UK-wide, the Big Lottery Fund will distribute through its new programmes and allocations funding worth over £2.6bn between now and April 2009. Regularly updated information on the Big Lottery Fund’s new programmes is available at www.biglotteryfund.org.uk/publications.htm

Tags