Portsmouth charities delighted as community lottery funding awarded through Hive

Charities and other good causes throughout Portsmouth have been awarded funding to help them through the cost of living crisis.

The Portsmouth Community Lottery Fund has been awarded to multiple charities and organisations across the city in order to help them with the cost of living crisis that has resulted in their clients struggling even more.

Hive has granted charities with a maximum of £1,000 each to help them maintain their work and offer their service users extra warm spaces or assistance – which bosses say will go a long way. Some charities within the city have already been granted money and so far the total amount distributed is £7,520.

Hive is a Portsmouth-based partnership comprising the voluntary and community sector, NHS Portsmouth CCG and Portsmouth City Council. The aim of Hive is to work together as a community to offer help and support to those that may need it, whilst also helping to fund existing charities and voluntary organisations to ensure that their work continues to make Portsmouth the best it can be.

The charities that have been awarded cash are Connors Toy Library, Citizens Advice Portsmouth, Roberts Centre, Headway, Home-Start Portsmouth, Hope into Action Portsmouth, Friends of Aldingbourne Trust and The You Trust.

Home-Start Portsmouth offers young families additional support when they are going through difficult times and they provide play groups, one-to-one help and advice for parents experiencing difficulty. They help parents that are going through financial hardship, bereavement, isolation and loneliness, anxiety, health problems and more. The charity used their funding of £1,000 to offer their clients Christmas hampers and vouchers over the festive period to help them pay for electricity, heating and food.

Headway is a charity that offers support to people who have a brain injury, their families and carers, and their aim is to raise awareness of head injuries, as well as offering activities that can help.

Jo Dallas, service and funding manager for Headway, said: ‘As always we are really appreciative of funding and donations because we really rely on funding that comes our way for our service users.

‘We offer an outreach service programme for people with a brain injury, we have four sessions at the Mountbatten Centre and we offer them support. The money we have received is being used to offer support on the cost of living crisis.

‘To be honest, at the moment one of the biggest things is that I think we will see the true extent of it all now because everyone has got through Christmas and when we sit back I think everyone will start to realise, which is why we are using the money to get ahead of this so we can offer our service users with advice and signpost where they can go to get help.’

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Connors Toy Library is another charity that has benefited from the funding and they received £1,000. They offer play groups and support for families, as well as allowing children to have access to a range of toys to play with and borrow. They have 11 community toy library sessions, stay, play and toy loan sessions, costing only £3 per session.

Karen Drayton, manager at Connors Toy Library, said: ‘The money we have been given has been used to offer people at our groups a warm cup of tea or coffee and biscuits so we can offer them a warm and friendly place.

‘It means that we have money that we can put in the pot to be able to buy parents biscuits and so everyone that comes in can have a warm place. It is massive help, especially with the current climate so to receive any funding is amazing.’

Karen said that due to the current climate, families, more than ever, are looking to socialise with other people to prevent isolating themselves, and that most of their sessions are full.

She added: ‘I think that now we are past Christmas our families will start to struggle more and I think we have coped well up until this point but people are getting ready for it and I don’t think we quite realised how bad it is going to be.’

A lot of charities across the number are either struggling financially or are having to try and help their service users, who are finding it difficult to put food on the table and heat their homes.

Hope Into Action is a charity that tries to tackle homelessness by offering people a temporary accommodation until they can support themselves, but in doing so, they have bills to cover in order to keep providing the help they do.

Tracey Ansell, chair of trustees for Hope Into Action, said: ‘It is amazing to get the funding because obviously not everyone wins every grant they apply for and for us we try and help homeless people get back on track, and back into homes through the support of local churches. We are not a forever home, but a place they can call home while they are getting back on their feet.

‘We have got eight houses at the moment, all of them have utility bills and most of our tenants are on benefits so actually keeping them warm and feeding them is a big challenge for us right now, so being able to put some money towards the heating so they can afford food is really helpful at this point in time.

‘It is really helpful that places like Hive and the council can recognise the challenges we are facing and they are looking to alleviate the pressure by offering funding, it just shows they have got their finger on the pulse.’