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Lottery award a huge boost for people with learning disability

A Hanley-based charity has won a huge grant from the Big Lottery Fund to support people with learning disability in Stoke-on-Trent.

The award of £480,345 is the largest given to any organisation in the West Midlands in the latest round of BLF funding and underlines the growing national reputation that the Dove Service has developed for the quality of its counselling and training programmes.

"We are absolutely thrilled", said the charity's Chief Executive Dr. Simon Hankins.

"This award enables us to greatly improve the lives of people with learning disability in Stoke-on-Trent over the next five years and comes on the back of ground-breaking services we have been delivering in the Moorlands and Newcastle districts.

"It also says a great deal about how highly-regarded the Potteries have become as a centre for talking therapies.

"People experience grief and loss in many different ways and I don't think that there is another area in the country which has such expertise in helping to resolve these stressful conditions".

The award was made by the Big Lottery Fund Reaching Communities Programme and is the second grant of this size achieved by the Dove Service. In January last year, the charity launched its five-year project to support 10-18-year-olds in the city helped by a BLF Young People's Fund award of £477,850.

In July last year, the charity's learning disability project in the Moorlands and Newcastle was selected by NHS West Midlands as an excellent example of good practice, describing it as "unique" and "not the same as any other provision".

Last month, the Staffordshire Learning Disability Partnership Board allocated £34,450 additional funding to keep that service going after county commissioner Sarah Taylor had praised the Dove Service's "fantastic hard work and dedication to the project".

In March, the Dove Service started worked with the Christian charity, The Saltbox, on a service to help lonely pensioners in the city after the two charities spent months working together on preparing a joint bid which attracted £423,264 from the Big Lottery Fund.

John Wright, one of the Trustees at the charity, pointed out that because of increased demand for funding, the Big Lottery Fund had told charities that it would "only consider making grants of more than £300,000 if we think your project is an example of excellent practice".

"This is a huge feather in our cap, not just for our Counsellors and Management Team but also for Staffordshire as a whole.

"Any charity will tell you that these awards are very difficult to achieve and only happen if you are delivering great results on the ground.

"The founder of our charity, Dr. Linda Machin, lives in North Staffordshire and is a world authority on how bereavement and loss impacts on people's lives. Dr Machin acts as an adviser to our Board, and the county can probably claim to be a national leader in this area".

He added that the Dove Service was actively seeking partnerships with other charities in the area to deliver joint services.

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