- Area:
- Wales
- Programme:
- Improving Futures
- Release date:
- 2 4 2012
The Action for Children organisation is sharing in more than £1.7 million awarded by the Big Lottery Fund today to run two ground-breaking projects in Wales which will support young children growing up in very difficult circumstances and help transform their life chances.
Through BIG’s Improving Futures programme, which is providing up to £26 million for more joined-up and earlier support to families with multiple and complex problems, Action for Children has been awarded two grants amounting to a total of £1,799,873 to run projects in specific areas of both North and South Wales.
BIG’s backing will see families, whose eldest children are aged between five and ten years old, being offered tailored support from local voluntary sector organisations working in partnerships with public services.
One award of £899,873 will enable Action for Children to run the Denbighshire Bridge Project (Bridging the gap in Early Intervention), a new three year project which will be delivered across Denbighshire, North Wales, to benefit around 240 families.
The project aims to improve educational achievement, emotional wellbeing and family relationships through intensive early intervention to vulnerable families in the catchment area of six primary schools in the County. The project will deliver one to one support and group work to help families to better manage children's behaviours so that child safety and school attendance can improve, reducing the need for further intervention.
A co-ordinated package of parenting support from a range of partners will be delivered in the home, community and school, focussing on achieving change in bite size pieces. This will address subjects such as improved parenting, money management and self esteem building, and also increase home and school links by encouraging parents onto the premises for purposes other than to discuss education issues. This will enable families to develop positive relationships with teachers and implement routines that encourage school attendance.
A further £900,000 for Action for Children will enable them to run the Action for Children Connecting Families Project in the County Borough of Bridgend, South Wales. The project will support around 150 families by delivering targeted family support with children and parents to improve their lives and prevent family issues escalating to crisis point requiring statutory intervention.
A key worker will be appointed to work with families in the family home to identify suitable interventions and develop a Family Plan. The key worker will coordinate the interventions in accordance with the Family Plan to make positive changes for the child and their family.
Bespoke early interventions will include: Brief Solution Focussed Therapy, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy; Motivational Interviewing; Bereavement programme and Behavioural Management techniques. The content of the early interventions will include: coping with parents with mental health issues, coping with parents who abuse substances, self esteem, bereavement and loss and domestic abuse.
Childcare workers will be available to deliver interactive sessions to children one-to-one or in groups, involving direct play, drama, arts and crafts and music and a team of parenting workers will also be available to work with the parents in groups or on a one-to-one to basis to provide support and advice adapting existing parenting programmes to provide services for primary school aged children.
Highlighting the importance of the funding, Sir Adrian Webb, Big Lottery Fund Wales Chair and UK Board Member, said: "We all know that children's life chances are affected by the environment they are born into. Some families are dealing with complex issues of poor housing, long term unemployment, drug and alcohol misuse and various health problems. These are largely adult issues but they have serious consequences for their children's lives.
“Children who live in and around these families tend to do less well in school, tend to have poorer health and can often grow up to have similar problems themselves. To improve the life chances of those children, joined-up support is needed across the whole family.”
He added: “This programme is about innovation and finding successful, cost effective ways of helping those families, so that their problems don’t escalate into crisis. The thorough evaluation accompanying this work will help ensure that what we learn benefits children and their families well beyond the projects themselves.”
Further Information
Fflur Lawton- Big Lottery Fund Press Office: 02920 678 237
Out of Hours Contact: 07717 513 418
Public Enquiries Line: 08454 102030
Textphone: 0845 6021 659
Full details of the Big Lottery Fund programmes and grant awards are available at: www.biglotteryfund.org.uk
Notes to Editors
- In Wales, the Big Lottery Fund is rolling out around £100,000 a day in Lottery good cause money, which together with other Lottery distributors means that across Wales 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. It was 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 given out across the arts, sport, heritage, charities, health, education and the environment.
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