051203 Lottery to fund major new health facility in Forth Valley

The centre will provide a range of new services for the Forth Valley. These will include rehabilitation and mobility training for people with visual impairments, sign language interpreting services and specialist support for deafblind people. The centre will provide advice and information and also develop a range of services including support for people with a sensory impairment to find employment or access further education. Some of the services the centre will provide will benefit people all over Scotland. The Management Committee hope that by combining services under the one roof that better services will be provided to a much larger group.

Maria Dick, Project Manager for the Trust said: “This is wonderful news from the Community Fund for all the Trust partners and the service users who have worked hard together to develop what we believe will be an outstanding facility for people with sight and hearing impairments.

Ann Brown from the Royal National Institute of the Deaf said: “ Services for people with a sensory impairment are dispersed and many initiatives are not linked with health and the statutory sector. This project takes a strategic approach leading the way in being a flagship centre of national significance”

The grant is amongst 39 announced today in a £4m package to support innovative projects throughout Scotland.

The chair of the lottery distributor’s grant making Scotland Committee, Kay Hampton, said:

“We are delighted to be announcing this latest round of grants. Once again lottery funds are going to support innovative projects to enable people to participate more fully in public and community life in Scotland. The Sensory Centre in Falkirk is a real example of how this can be achieved. We have already funded a similar project in Fife a few years ago which has proved to be an outstanding success and I am convinced that this project will be the same. It will make an enormous difference not only to people in the Central Belt but right across the country.”

The Community Fund is the biggest independent funder of charities, voluntary organisations and community groups in Scotland.

Notes to editors

A full list of grants is attached. Please refer to all three lists for details of all the grants in your area. The grants are made under two programmes run by the Community Fund: Grants for large projects and Grants for medium sized projects.
The Community Fund (formerly the National Lottery Charities Board) was set up in 1995 to distribute proceeds from the National Lottery to community and voluntary organisations.