National Lottery Funding to Support Stroke Survivors Across the UK

Different Strokes is delighted to have received a grant of £19,920 from the National Lottery Community Fund.

These funds have been received via the Awards for All England Fund, and will go towards us continuing to support stroke survivors through our ‘Stroke Survivors Together – Meeting in Support’ Project.

This project, which combines long-standing initiatives with some recently developed work, is all about providing the opportunities for stroke survivors to engage with each other, to share stories, and to support one another.

We know, both through many years of providing such opportunities and via regular feedback from our beneficiaries, how crucial peer support is, and what is equally important is that we provide this in as many different formats as possible.

Therefore, recognising that stroke survivors face different circumstances and will prefer to engage with each other in different ways, we have based this project around three strands of our work:

Our group network – providing funds to continue to support our network of 30+ local groups across the country, and to provide start-up funding for three new groups
Regional meetings – supporting our newly launched community events, which we are holding in various locations on a monthly basis. These are particularly useful for stroke survivors that would like face-to-face contact with other survivors, but are either not based in a location where a group exists, or are not able to attend on a regular basis
Virtual meetings and webinars – continuation of our facilitated fortnightly Zoom sessions for stroke survivors to talk with each other, which is especially welcomed by survivors who may not be able to get to physical meet-ups, along with monthly webinars on a series of subjects of interest to stroke survivors

Austin Willett, CEO of Different Strokes, commented, “We’re so grateful to the National Lottery Community Fund for their support. We know how important peer support is to everyone that we support, and we are therefore delighted to have the value of this work recognised by the Fund. All these activities provide a forum for the younger stroke survivor community to come together, share their experiences and gain strength from knowing they are not alone.

Our peer support groups provide vital information, advice and rehabilitative exercise classes, the new regional meetings will broaden access to face-to-face support, and complementing this, our virtual meetings and webinars are accessible irrespective of geographic, socio-economic or personal circumstances, providing a safe and positive forum for stroke survivors to meet and support each other, as well as learn about the stroke recovery issues that are important to them.

Thanks to the Community Fund, we are able to fully resource these services for the next 12 months, ensuring that stroke survivors get the support that they need.”