Over £700,000 awarded to local groups from the Surrey Health and Wellbeing Fund

The Mums and Midwives Awareness (MAMA) Academy received a grant award to provide pregnancy passports delivering key safer pregnancy messaging to every expectant parent in the Surrey Heartlands area for a year. Chris Binnie, Business Development Manager at the MAMA Academy advised:

“We’re so excited to be able to make Pregnancy Passports available to the women and families of Surrey thanks to this generous funding. These resources have a track record nationwide of improving parents’ awareness about safer pregnancy, and we look forward to them helping to save babies’ lives in Surrey.”

Family Voice Surrey received funding over two years for a safe space where parent carers of children with additional needs can share their experience, awareness of local services and affect system change.

Benedicte Symcox, CEO of Family Voice Surrey advised:

“The engagement project is crucial to ensure that the evidence we give our partners is truly representative of our community. A key aspect of the project is to offer every parent carer the chance to be heard”.

A two-year grant was awarded to Sight For Surrey for their “Living Without Barriers” project to support those with significant sight and hearing loss at the early stages of diagnosis in the eye and audiology clinics. This project is supporting people to access a range of emotional and practical help as they go through the process of coming to terms with the fact that they now have significant sight and/or hearing loss that is going to impact on their daily lives. Bob Hughes, CEO, Sight for Surrey advised:

“We are thrilled to have been chosen as a beneficiary of the NHS Charities Together funding. This will enable us to provide more emotional and practical support to people in hospital eye clinics across the county as well as introducing Hearing Loss Advisors in the audiology clinics”.

Funding over two years was also awarded to

Emerge Advocacy for their Voice of Hope programme supporting young people in A&E and beyond because of self-harm, suicide attempt or emotional crisis. Teams of specially trained staff and volunteers across Surrey Heartlands are present in hospital during the evenings to bring comfort, compassion and care to people aged 10 to 25 arriving in A&E or staying on the wards because of self-harm, suicidal ideation or emotional crisis. The team also provides follow-up support as soon as young people leave hospital to provide a bridge back into daily life following their crisis. This tailored support reduces the risk of repeat crisis and re-admission and helps to set young people on a new trajectory. 

East Surrey Domestic Abuse Services are using their funding towards a specialist Domestic Abuse and Mental Health Worker and specialist counselling and psychotherapy to survivors of domestic abuse in East Surrey. The group has created a position dedicated to working with survivors whose experiences of trauma have led to significant mental ill-health as well as providing them with opportunities to access appropriate trauma informed therapeutic interventions that meet their needs.