Local community group, SEDSConnective, is today celebrating after being awarded £20,000 in National Lottery funding to support its work with a mental health project for the neurodivergent community. The group, based in in Sussex, will use the money to provide support services designed by those with lived-in experiences. This includes regular meetings, specialised sessions, such as, specialised Pilates, physiotherapy, lymphatic demonstrations, art therapy, community expert and member talks, and advocacy activities, both in-person and online.
SEDSConnective has been running since 2018 and is staffed by 30 volunteers. It was founded by Jane Green MBE FCCT after she herself faced lifelong financial and physical challenges, impeded by the late diagnosis, and lack of training available to education, health, and care staff to assess and diagnose neurodivergence conditions.
The group now runs a Pilates session a month, attended by up to 10 members, and each session is carefully designed for people with symptomatic hypermobility, and conditions, such as Ehlers-Danlos Syndromes (EDS), and Hypermobility Spectrum Disorders (HSD). Together with the health benefits, members are also gaining an opportunity to meet with the wider neurodivergent community, driving greater confidence, self-belief and important collaboration skills. This supports and enhances their mental wellbeing.
The new funding 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 see these sessions expanded to two per week. This means that the number of members able to participate will increase.
At the same time, the group will be able to press on with plans to introduce mental health support sessions. The new pilot project for the charity will help SEDSConnective expand the services to more areas in the region, and hopefully enable everyone to join the support network.
Jane Green MBE FCCT, founder and chair of SEDSConnective, 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 broaden the range of opportunities available to members with symptomatic hypermobility and their families. This is important because it helps both the members and their families to build relationships with others facing similar challenges and to create their own supportive circles of friends and peers.”
The National Lottery Community Fund recently launched its new 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 The National Lottery Community Fund was able to distribute over half a billion pounds (£615.4 million) of life-changing funding to communities.