Thursday, 25 January 2024

Local community group, SEDSConnective, is today celebrating after being awarded £20,000 in National Lottery funding to support its work with a mental health project for the neurodivergent community. The group, based in in Sussex, will use the money to provide support services designed by those with lived-in experiences. This includes regular meetings, specialised sessions, such as, specialised Pilates, physiotherapy, lymphatic demonstrations, art therapy, community expert and member talks, and advocacy activities, both in-person and online.

SEDSConnective has been running since 2018 and is staffed by 30 volunteers. It was founded by Jane Green MBE FCCT after she herself faced lifelong financial and physical challenges, impeded by the late diagnosis, and lack of training available to education, health, and care staff to assess and diagnose neurodivergence conditions.

The group now runs a Pilates session a month, attended by up to 10 members, and each session is carefully designed for people with symptomatic hypermobility, and conditions, such as Ehlers-Danlos Syndromes (EDS), and Hypermobility Spectrum Disorders (HSD). Together with the health benefits, members are also gaining an opportunity to meet with the wider neurodivergent community, driving greater confidence, self-belief and important collaboration skills. This supports and enhances their mental wellbeing.

The new funding from The National Lottery Community Fund, which distributes money raised by National Lottery players for good causes and is the largest community funder in the UK, will see these sessions expanded to two per week. This means that the number of members able to participate will increase.

At the same time, the group will be able to press on with plans to introduce mental health support sessions. The new pilot project for the charity will help SEDSConnective expand the services to more areas in the region, and hopefully enable everyone to join the support network.

Jane Green MBE FCCT, founder and chair of SEDSConnective, says: “We’re delighted that The National Lottery Community Fund has recognised our work in this way. Now, thanks to National Lottery players we will be able to press on with our plans to broaden the range of opportunities available to members with symptomatic hypermobility and their families. This is important because it helps both the members and their families to build relationships with others facing similar challenges and to create their own supportive circles of friends and peers.”

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

SEDSConnective - media contact:

Sonal Bisht, telephone number +447376973688 or email: sonal@sedsconnective.org.



About SEDSConnective:

SEDSConnective is a voluntary and user-led charity based in Sussex with global reach providing voice and support for people with symptomatic hypermobility or, if diagnosed, Ehlers-Danlos syndromes (EDS) Hypermobility Spectrum Disorders (HSD) and pgJH (Paediatric Generalised Joint Hypermobility) and evidenced neurodivergence (Autism, ADHD, Dyspraxia and Tourette’s +). The charity provides research, advice, support, specialist activities, advocacy and more.

For further information on the charity, please visit the website www.sedsconnective.org, or social media on X/Twitter (https://twitter.com/SEDSConnective), LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com/company/sedsconnective/), or FaceBook (www.facebook.com/SEDSConnective/).



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:

1. Come together
2. Be environmentally sustainable
3. Help children and young people thrive
4. 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.