Staffordshire bereavement service gets £800k lottery grant
A Staffordshire bereavement service has been awarded almost £800,000 by the Big Lottery Fund (BLF).
For the past two years The Dove Service has been providing specialist counselling services to people with learning disabilities.
But the scheme had been restricted to Newcastle-under-Lyme and the Staffordshire Moorlands.
This new lottery grant means it can now be extended to include Stoke-on-Trent and last for another five years.
'A real need'
The project mixes one-to-one counselling and awareness workshops to help individuals, their family and carers come to terms with the anxiety, confusion and grief that bereavement can bring.
Dove's chief executive Dr Simon Hankins said: "There's no other service that we can find within Staffordshire that's providing the sort of support we're providing to people with learning disabilities.
"The lottery doesn't give grants of that magnitude just because we're good at grant writing. It's that we've actually identified a real need out there."
The Dove Service, which is based in Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent, also provides counselling and support to anyone who is struggling to cope with bereavement, life-changing illness and other losses.