Kids Inspire celebrates receiving £1 million National Lottery funding
Kids Inspire, the Chelmsford-based children's mental health and trauma recovery charity, is thrilled to announce a £1 million National Lottery funding award to help local children and families. This substantial grant will enable us to expand our services, reaching more communities across Essex, Suffolk, and the surrounding areas.
This new funding, spread over the next five years from The National Lottery Community Fund, which distributes money raised by National Lottery players for good causes and is the largest community funder in the UK, will also support the growth and development of our services across Suffolk.
At the same time, we will continue to develop our mentoring and volunteer programmes, increase our community engagement activities to reach more groups and communities, and in the longer term our strategic goal is to expand our geographical reach across England.
Kids Inspire turns 17 years old next month and has helped tens of thousands of children and families in that time. It was founded by Sue Bell OBE after she identified that there was a gap in appropriate psychological help for children who had experienced trauma and mental health issues.
The charity works across the South East, putting children at the ‘centre’ of any therapeutic work that involves them. Family inclusive treatment is at the heart of our approach, working with not just the child, but the adults and those who care for them to provide a circle of support to overcome challenges.
Sue Bell OBE, Chief Executive and Clinical Director of Kids Inspire says:
“We’re delighted that The National Lottery Community Fund has recognised our work in this way. Now, thanks to National Lottery players we will be able to press on with our plans to grow and ensure even more children and families get the vital support they need to recover from trauma and thrive.
We know that children are struggling; an NHS report last year states that one in five children and young people have a probable mental health disorder. We see this in the number of issues children are facing, with our weekly referrals almost doubling in just three years. There is an unmet need in our communities, which is why our work is so important.”
Our Kids Inspire founder & CEO, Sue Bell OBE, alongside Head of Fundraising, Paula, and Chief Operating Officer, Vicky Haylock, proudly holding the £1 million cheque.
The National Lottery Community Fund recently launched its strategy, ‘It starts with community’, which will underpin its efforts to distribute at least £4 billion of National Lottery funding by 2030.
As part of this, the funder has four key missions, which are to support communities to come together, be environmentally sustainable, help children and young people thrive and enable people to live healthier lives.
National Lottery players raise over £30 million a week for good causes across the UK. Thanks to them, last year (2023/24) The National Lottery Community Fund awarded over half a billion pounds (£686.3 million) of life-changing funding to communities across the UK, supporting over 13,700 projects to turn their great ideas into reality.
To find out more visit www.TNLCommunityFund.org.uk