Harvey Girls, East Staffordshire Family Support Service and Dads4Dads celebrate after receiving £249,000 in National Lottery funding
Published: 7 December 2021
Harvey Girls, East Staffordshire Family Support Service and Dads4Dads, based in Burton upon Trent, are celebrating today after being awarded £249,000 in funding from The National Lottery Community Fund, the largest funder of community activity in the UK.
The charity is set to commence their project, called Thinking Differently, in early 2022, with the anticipation of reaching over 5,000 beneficiaries over three years of funding.
Thinking Differently will offer a programme of session-based activities, peer support, information and guidance for local families and their children in East Staffordshire. It is aimed at helping families who may be experiencing one or more support needs relating to the child’s development, mental health and emotional awareness, parenting strategies, relationships, wellbeing, boundaries and behaviour.
Harvey Girls, East Staffordshire Family Support Service and Dads4Dads will use their funding to support families to learn new skills, build resilience and improve their wider social and community networks.
This new National Lottery funding will help parents to increase their sense of self-esteem and self-confidence in parenting, along with increasing their ability to meet the needs of the family. Parents will have an increased awareness of wider support services in the community, with the aim of families feeling less isolated and lonely, in addition to enabling parents to seek access to the right support (reducing access to inappropriate support, such as unnecessary GP visits, A&E visits etc).
The funding will also enable the charity to launch a new telephone-based service – the ‘Connect Line’ – that will provide free and non-judgemental telephone support, information and signposting to families, helping to reduce anxiety and isolation.
When the project launches in early 2022, families can be referred to Thinking Differently through an online form, through a link on the charity’s website. A referral can be made by parents themselves, or by a professional such as a teacher, GP or other health professional.
National Lottery players raise over £30 million a week for good causes across the UK. The National Lottery Community Fund distributes a share of this to projects to support people and communities to prosper and thrive.
Ian North, Chief Executive at Harvey Girls, East Staffordshire Family Support Service and Dads4Dads, said: ‘Thanks to National Lottery players, this grant means that we can deliver a series of support through a programme of session-based activities for local families and their children in East Staffordshire.
‘With National Lottery funding, we will be able to bring people together & build strong relationships in and across communities, improve the places and spaces that matter to communities and enable more people to fulfil their potential by working to address issues at the earliest possible stage.
‘This will make a big difference to people’s lives.’
During the pandemic, in 2020 alone, The National Lottery Community Fund distributed almost £1 billion to charities and community organisations across the UK.