Big Lottery Fund award £676,384 to Cruse Bereavement

Ian Paisley MP has welcomed the news that the Big Lottery Fund have awarded a grant of £676,384 to the Cruse Bereavement Care project.

The grant is one of the first to be awarded by the BLF’s Reaching Out:Supporting Families programme.

The group, which supports people who have lost a loved one, will use the grant to run the Families Learning Together project, which it will run in partnership with the Corrymeela Community.

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Mr Paisley noted: “I have had quite a number of constituents who have cone to visit me at the Advice Centre in Ballymena who have received help in the past from Cruse Bereavement Care. It has been relayed back to me on numerous occasions from those same constituents the real difference that the project has made to their lives whilst coping with bereavement.”

The project will offer an intensive package of support for families from across Northern Ireland who have suffered or are facing bereavement. The support includes family residentials at Corrymeela in Ballycastle, bereavement counselling and home visits. Families will also be encouraged to become volunteers to help other people in the same position.

The Reaching Out: Supporting Families programme is investing £25 million in projects to help families in Northern Ireland to improve their children’s lives, with the motivation being to support families in coping with issues such as separation, absence of a key family member, poverty, disability, homelessness and abuse.

The MP concluded: “It is wonderful to see the Big Lottery Fund recognise the work of the Cruse Bereavement Care group and of those at Corrymeela by awarding them the funding to not only sustain but to further develop the service and support that they currently offer to so many people when they are at their most vulnerable time of need.”

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If you wish to apply for a Supporting a Families grant then applications need to be made before the 30th January 2015. Grants of between £500,000 - £700,000 for five years are available and there is a two-stage application process.