A community family support service provided for children with special educational needs by the Peter Pan Centre is set to double its offer to families in North Staffordshire thanks to a successful bid for National Lottery funding.
The near £250,000 lottery win will allow the Newcastle-under-Lyme based Peter Pan Centre to expand its specialist Stay and Play groups to venues in Tunstall and Longton for the first time, to launch a new range of social activities and training sessions for families and to employ a new specialist family support practitioner.
Stay and Play offers specially designed sessions for children under-5 and currently runs in venues in Newcastle and Burslem.
“It’s fantastic news as it will double our provision and help us to reach children in more areas of North Staffordshire, said Catherine Cook, Chief Executive. “Our Stay and Play groups will soon benefit 120 children and their parent carers, with each session run by a specialist practitioner and a parent volunteer.”
The Peter Pan Centre has been awarded £248,530 to support both its existing nursery provision and to expand its community-based support to families over three years.
Catherine said the award would be a major boost for parents as there’s a chronic shortfall of nursery provision for children with special educational needs.
She explained: “Some members of the public will probably assume there is additional funding available for specialist nurseries serving children with special needs but that simply isn’t the case. The Peter Pan Centre is a charity and we are almost entirely reliant on donations and fundraising.
“The entire early years sector is struggling right now and demand here and across the country always outstrips the spaces available.”
Founded in 1969 as a playgroup for children with disabilities, the Peter Pan Centre has grown to provide services across North Staffordshire and South Cheshire.
The Peter Pan Centre has a purpose-built fully accessible building in Hoon Avenue, Wolstanton. Facilities at the centre include two playrooms, a sensory room with an interactive floor projector, a parents room and a recently refurbished outside play area.
The staff are a team of Early Years education specialists with vast experience in supporting children with SEND (Special Educational Needs and Disability).
Peter Pan has a programme of fundraising events throughout the year and is always keen to forge partnerships with companies who want to support a local charity. To find out more, please go online to www.thepeterpancentre.co.uk
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For media enquiries contact Nigel Howle. Telephone 0776 2043436, email [email protected]
Notes to Editors:
About The National Lottery Community Fund
We are the largest non-statutory community funder in the UK – community is at the heart of our purpose, vision and name.
We support activities that create resilient communities that are more inclusive and environmentally sustainable and that will strengthen society and improve lives across the UK.
We’re proud to award money raised by National Lottery players to communities across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and to work closely with government to distribute vital grants and funding from key Government programmes and initiatives.
As well as responding to what communities tell us is important to them, our funding is focused on four key missions, supporting communities to:
- Come together
- Be environmentally sustainable
- Help children and young people thrive
- Enable people to live healthier lives.
Thanks to the support of National Lottery players, we distribute around £500 million a year through 10,000+ grants and plan to invest over £4 billion of funding into communities by 2030. We’re privileged to be able to work with the smallest of local groups right up to UK-wide charities, enabling people and communities to bring their ambitions to life.
National Lottery players raise over £30 million each week for good causes throughout the UK. Since The National Lottery began in 1994, £47 billion has been raised and more than 670,000 individual grants have been made across the UK – the equivalent of around 240 National Lottery grants in every UK postcode district.