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Winston’s Wish success with Big Lottery funding

Winston’s Wish, the charity for bereaved children, is delighted to have received funding from the Big Lottery Fund, to enable the charity to offer a targeted bereavement support programme for children and young people who are considered to be potentially at-risk of offending .

The new programme, which will be called ‘SWITCH’, is a targeted intervention providing therapeutic bereavement support for children and young people, aged between 8 and 14, who are bereaved of a parent or sibling and who are identified as being at-risk of offending. The programme aims to help young people recognise, understand and manage feelings and behaviours in relation to their grief.

This outreach intervention offers individual and group sessions on a weekly basis with the children and young people as well as sessions with their parent/carer. The sessions help young people to understand their grief, develop coping strategies to manage difficult feelings and behaviours, reduce social isolation and improve confidence and self esteem.

The project will operate for young people in Gloucestershire and West Sussex and is currently in its planning stages, with the service available from 1st October 2012 in Gloucestershire and from 2013 in West Sussex.

Speaking about the new service Fiona Talwar-Lomberg, Chief Executive at Winston’s Wish said “Winston’s Wish is delighted to receive this grant from the Big Lottery Fund’s Realising Ambition programme, which will allow us to reach young people at an early stage to address the impact that bereavement has on their already vulnerable position. This support will make a positive difference, enabling young people to switch direction and achieve their full potential, preventing them from a pathway into the criminal justice system.”

“Winston’s Wish has already changed the lives of so many children, young people and their families since it started 20 years ago. We are looking forward to continuing to help change lives and support children and young people who are so often hard to reach,” continued Fiona.

This funding also allows Winston’s Wish to work with a consortium of social and youth organisations and the other 24 funded projects, to develop a robust evaluation of its work and its impact on children and young people.

The programme offers the charity funding over a five year period and the total grant over this time will be £1,110,084. Winston’s Wish was one of the 25 successful grant applications made to the Big Lottery Fund for this Realising Ambitions project.

For more information on the Big Lottery Fund’s programme which Winston’s Wish was successful with please visit www.biglotteryfund.org.uk.

ENDS

For further information on Winston’s Wish please contact Susie Gallagher, Communications Officer on 01242 515157 or sgallagher@winstonswish.org.uk