Cloverleaf celebrates after receiving £261,203 of National Lottery funding to support people with learning disabilities develop positive relationships!

Cloverleaf are pleased to announce we have been awarded over £260,000 in funding from National Lottery to deliver a three-year project that will support people with learning disabilities living in Barnsley, Calderdale, and Kirklees to develop positive, long-lasting, relationships with friends, family, and partners.

The project – Happy, Healthy, Relationships – builds on a pilot delivered by Self Advocates in Kirklees and Calderdale over the last few years. It was developed with people with learning disabilities, their families and friends and includes:

• Courses for people with learning disabilities, looking at all aspects of relationships (including how to meet people, how to stay safe, rights and responsibilities, steps of a relationships, and dating)
• Workshops for families on how to support their relatives with learning disabilities to develop positive relationships (including the fear of letting go and being supportive without taking control)
• Workshops professionals, providers, and voluntary/community groups on how to ensure people they work with who have learning disabilities can access the support they need to build positive relationships (including human rights, communication needs, and person-centred listening). 

Courses will start in mid-2024 and we’ll be sharing information so people can sign up from the Spring (so keep an eye on our website and social media!).

To make sure the project truly meet the needs of people with a learning disability, before then, we will be setting up a Steering Group to feed into course/workshop design and support recruitment of the delivery team.

If you are interested in getting involved, please contact us on: 

Phone: 01924 454875 

Email: enquiries@cloverleaf-advocacy.co.uk

Or, if you are already engaged with our services, have a chat with the person you know best in Cloverleaf.

Suzi Henderson, Cloverleaf CEO, said, “This is an amazing project that has been several years in the making.  We are thrilled to have been awarded funding from National Lottery to help us take Happy, Healthy, Relationships, to the next level. The project will be designed and delivered with people with learning disabilities, ensuring it reflects what they want (not what others think they need). Our next steps are to set up a Steering Group and recruit a team with lived experience, so please get in touch if you want to find out more about being involved.” 

David, one of the Self-Advocates for Kirklees Involvement Network, said, ”We are over the moon to get the funding from the National Lottery for our Happy, Healthy Relationships Project.  Since we started our pilot project four years ago, we have worked hard to get a proper support for local people with a learning disability around sex and relationships.  These courses will help keep people safe; they will understand how to have safe relationships and keep safe online. The courses will give people lots of time to think about what they want out of relationships and get the right support.”

About National Lottery

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.  

To find out more visit www.TNLCommunityFund.org.uk