Mental health & educational support group helps kids return to school thanks to National Lottery funding

An organisation that supports children struggling to attend school due to anxiety and other mental health conditions has received £10,000 of National Lottery funding.

Hope4More in Crewe, Cheshire, has received the award from The National Lottery Community Fund, the largest community funder in the UK, to increase support for young people at risk of dropping out of school due to anxiety.

The funding will be used to expand the organisation’s 12 week programme, which helps young people through a combination of arts education, therapy, professional counselling and parent support groups. The aim is to improve confidence and self-esteem and reduce school related anxiety with arts-based learning, culminating in a special opportunity to display their art work at an exhibition.

Hope4More plan to more than double the amount of families they can support from September, thanks to their new National Lottery funding.

Sheila Griffiths and Leeanne Donnelly, who together run Hope4More, have supported each other over the past eight years after their own children began struggling with their mental health at school.

As the situation worsened, Leeanne was forced to give up a career as a Bank Manager, and Sheila her job as a Global Sales Director, as they believed that they needed better care for their children and provided them with an alternative education in a more appropriate setting.

It’s been a long road for Sheila, Leeanne and their children, but the pair are now hoping to use their lived experience to help more families in similar situations.

Since launching last year, the service has achieved a 91% attendance rate, a figure which the group said is almost unheard of in alternative education provision, with 25% of the young people it works with already back in school or attending alternative education.

Figures from the Department for Education show that 7.5% of children in the UK were out of school during the first term of the past academic year, with 24% of these being persistently absent. This compares to an absence rate of 4.9% in autumn 2019/20, the last term of data prior to the pandemic, with only 13% of these being persistent absences.

Sheila Griffiths, co-founder at Hope4More, said: “We cannot thank National Lottery players enough for this funding, as it will make a huge difference to lives of people in our community, and will help young people access education and meet or beat their potential in life.

“General and persistent absence from school due to mental and/or emotional health issues is not new, however the support services to help address this have progressively become more and more stretched. This has resulted in untreated root causes to all types of mental and emotional health related absence and a reduction in support services for young people and their families.

“The pandemic made matters worse – young people who were socially isolated became more so. Those with anxiety-related school attendance issues before Covid found their emotional and mental health worsening, with the prospect of engaging with school again becoming incredibly daunting, if not impossible.”

Hope4More is one of 85 charities and community groups across Cheshire to have been awarded more than £3.6 million of National Lottery funding over the last four months*. Cheshire isn’t alone in benefiting from National Lottery funding. Today it was announced that £252 million has been distributed to over 5,000 community organisations across England in the past four months*.

The National Lottery Community Fund awards grants to strengthen society and improve lives across the UK. Thanks to National Lottery players, it will distribute at least £4 billion by 2030, supporting activities that create resilient communities that are more inclusive and environmentally sustainable.

Gillian Halliwell, Head of Regional Funding for The National Lottery Community Fund in the North West, said: “Thanks to National Lottery players and the hard work and dedication of local groups and projects like Hope4More, this funding will make a big difference to people’s lives in the North West. The quality of applications we receive speaks volumes of the care and ingenuity of local people - we’re delighted that our grants are being used to support great projects that strengthen communities and improve lives in our region in many ways.”

National Lottery players raise over £30 million a week for good causes across the UK. Thanks to them, last year The National Lottery Community Fund was able to distribute over half a billion pounds (£588.2 million) of life-changing funding to communities.

To find out more visit www.TNLCommunityFund.org.uk

Date published: 25 July, 2023
Region: England (North West)

Notes to Editors

* These figures are for funding awarded from 25 February – 30 June 2023.

About The National Lottery Community Fund 

We are the largest non-statutory community funder in the UK – community is at the heart of our purpose, vision and name.

We support activities that create resilient communities that are more inclusive and environmentally sustainable and that will strengthen society and improve lives across the UK.

We’re proud to award money raised by National Lottery players to communities across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and to work closely with Government to distribute vital grants and funding from key Government programmes and initiatives.  

As well as responding to what communities tell us is important to them, our funding is focused on four key missions, supporting communities to:

1. Come together

2. Be environmentally sustainable

3. Help children and young people thrive

4. Enable people to live healthier lives.

Thanks to the support of National Lottery players, we distribute around £500 million a year through 10,000+ grants and plan to invest over £4bn of funding into communities by 2030. We’re privileged to be able to work with the smallest of local groups right up to UK-wide charities, enabling people and communities to bring their ambitions to life.  

National Lottery players raise over £30 million each week for good causes throughout the UK. Since The National Lottery began in 1994, £47 billion has been raised and more than 670,000 individual grants have been made across the UK - the equivalent of around 240 National Lottery grants in every UK postcode district.

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