A North Staffordshire charity, which provides vital support to vulnerable adults and children, is set to increase their services and employ three full-time members of staff after being awarded funding from The National Lottery Community Fund.
Helping Angels Charitable Association has received £187,500 from the fund, which has secured employment for a Digital Lead, Community Support Worker and Project Manager for the next three years.
These permanent roles will enable the charity to further extend their services, which are all designed to help those they support to reach their full potential via various group activities including educational life skills and advancement of social inclusion.
The National Lottery Community Fund distributes money raised by National Lottery players for good causes and is the largest community funder in the UK.
Natasha Gratton, CEO of Helping Angels Charitable Association, said: “After the pandemic struck last year everything moved online, such as shopping, ordering medication and even talking to family members and we saw a huge increase in social inequalities. The adults and children we support struggled to use online technology and we recognised a real need to help everyone to be more digitally pro-active and learn valuable skills to enhance their own lives.
“In 2020 we did receive support from The National Lottery Community Fund and temporary roles for the extra services we required were introduced.
“Now, with huge thanks to The National Lottery players, we are delighted that we can move forward with this and plan ahead for the next three years - we cannot say thank you enough for the support.”
Natasha adds: “In the last 12 months we have supported 700 people with our services and over the next there years we will be looking at providing support to around 3,000 people in our local communities.
“Services such as, educational life skills workshops, wellbeing sessions and other support groups will continue on a more permanent basis now and our community support worker will continue to be very much at the heart of what we do. Working with our project manager we can now develop new vital services and plans for the next three years.”
