GROUPS AWARDED LOTTERY FUNDING

This article appears in today's Leicester Mercury:

Fiona Kinsey, resource centre manager for Network for Change

Groups awarded lottery funding

by Cathy Buss

Two groups, one which helps families and the other which helps people with mental health problems, have won more than £500,000 from the Big Lottery Fund.

Home-Start Leicester has been awarded £334,370 from the lottery's reaching communities programme.

The group will use the money to train new volunteers to help support families under stress.

Helen Everett, chairman of the trustees of Home-Start Leicester, said: "It is fantastic news. It means we can continue our much-needed support to families in the city and recruit more volunteers and staff. This will secure the future of the service to children and families for the next four years."

Volunteers from the organisation, which has been running in the city for 40 years, visit a family's home once a week to offer support.

They can help with stimulating play activities for children, parenting strategies and accessing services.

Lottery cash will go towards new projects to increase parents' confidence, encourage children's emotional and social readiness for school and promote healthy lifestyles.

Home-Start Leicester has 28 home-visiting volunteers and in the past year supported 71 families.

It has just two members of staff but two more full-time posts will be created.

The city-based Network for Change organisation has been awarded £244,184 from the lottery's reaching communities programme.

It can now expand its work with adults with severe and complex mental health problems.

Gabby Briner, chief executive at Network for Change, said: "There are a high number of people in Leicester with severe and complex mental health issues who are often socially isolated and struggle to access support to keep well, prevent crisis and cope with life.

"Our Mind The Gap project will provide an exciting programme of individual and peer support, plus therapeutic, social and coping strategies, groups and activities."

Fiona Kinsey, resource centre manager for Network for Change, said: "This lottery funding will make a huge difference to us."

REDP CORE PARTNERS TAKE STOCK

Leicestershire Centre for Integrated Living (LCIL) is the venue for this morning's meeting of the Core Partners of the Regional Equality and Diversity Partnership (REDP) with Dennis Fisher, Grants Officer at The Big Lottery. It's The Big Lottery's Basis Fund that bankrolls REDP and Dennis is charged with overseeing our project. We've met with him several times in different settings over the past couple of years; he's here today to talk about our work so far and how we're going to make progress in the final year of this intial funding period.

Round the table for this meeting with Dennis are the Chair of REDP, Iris Lightfoote (The Race Equality Centre), Dee Martin (Leicestershire Centre for Integrated Living), Ian Robson (Leicester LGBT Centre), Laura Horton (Project Manager, REDP) and myself, of course, representing Leicester Council of Faiths.

Ian, Iris and I are here until lunchtime, to join in an overall discussion of the project. Dennis spends the rest his visit with Dee (since LCIL is the accountable body for REDP) and with Laura.

We all get the chance to speak this morning; Dennis asks me directly about the "diversity" dimension of REDP.

There's a convivial atmosphere in the meeting today and our funders seem pleased with how REDP has performed.

CreativeCoffee Club: fit & funny

This morning, I nip across from our exhibition in Highcross to attend the regular fortnightly meeting of CreativeCoffee club at Phoenix Square Film & Digital Media Centre. Today we're all lending support to a bid by Leicester Comedy Festival to win £40,000 of Big Lottery funding. The public are being invited to cast their phone vote to decide whether the cash would go to our Comedy Fest or to the renovation of the Parish Rooms in Coventry, a venue mostly used by a local Scout group.

The Comedy Festival would spend the £40,000 on training people in performance comedy and increasing the number of comedy workshops on offer around the festival.

The bid is led by Rob Gee, who gets us all to pose for the photo above (I'm on the far right, beside the pillar).

In the end, the Parish Rooms won the public vote, by 3930 to 801. Blimey - what a skelping!

East Midlands regional event: Knowledge, Impact & Success

At the Riverside Centre, Pride Park, Derby, for a conference jointly sponsored by the Big Lottery Fund, Capacity Builders and One East Midlands. The title of this regional event, "Knowledge, Impact and Success" offers an upbeat face when much of the sector is unsettled in the light of changes, cuts and contractions threatened by the new economic regime of the Coalition Government. But there's actually no doubting that there is a generally upbeat air about the proceedings here today. The Voluntary and Community Sector has never been comfortable and safe, never really felt at ease with its political masters, never been able to look to the future with security and certainty. Things may look unsettled and grim all round, but many people are saying, "Well, what's new?" Oh, what is new is that it seems that we're not the Voluntary and Community Sector (VCS) now, we've been dubbed "Civil Society Organisations" (CSO). I spent a fair bit of time yesterday, going through some of REDP's texts, making it read consistently, "Voluntary and Community Sector" and "VCS". Does this mean I need to go back through all that and change them all again?

Be that as it may, it's another worthwhile trip out of Leicester. Laura Horton, Project Manager of REDP, and I are here to make contacts and make an impression. I'd like to think we manage to do both. In the afternoon, we conduct three "speed dating" workshops, where we both sit at a table while someone comes and sits with us for up to 20 minutes and quizzes us about our organisation and its work. I'd been asked to write a short  piece about REDP's work for Insight, the One East Midlands magazine, which is in delegates' packs today. We were a bit anxious about this when we saw the proofs a week or so ago, and were unable to make some alterations that we thought necessary - but seeing the finished product, I'm glad to say that it's turned out just fine.

The event finishes at three o'clock, to allow everyone to follow the England v Slovakia match at the World Cup. I end up watching it in a big hall behind where we've had our conference, sitting with the centre staff, who've been given a few free hours in the afternoon to cheer on Rooney & Co. I enter into the spirit of things with a great big chip butty. But then I reveal my true nature by putting mayo on my chips, rather than ketchup. Mind you, it could have been worse. I could have really given myself away by asking for a can of Irn Bru!