A fantastic cash boost is LANDED
Group celebrates vital funding support
A Wishaw- based peer education project has LANDED up to £300,000 in vital funding to allow it to deliver drug and alcohol awareness training.
The cash injection from NHS Lanarkshire will see the project rolling out a raft of initiatives and workshops for the benefit of the health and welfare of young people over the next three years.
LANDED, based in Wishaw’s Kenilworth Avenue, will receive £70,000 a year for the next three years from the NHS – with the potential of securing an additional £30,000 per year.
LANDED is a young persons’ project that provides and promotes peer education services for young people and service providers in Lanarkshire.
I t o f f e r s v o l u nt e e r i n g opportunities for young people and supports them to become positive, active citizens.
The cash pot will allow the project to deliver blocks of six training sessions across the NHS Lanarkshire area in tobacco and e-cig awareness, cannabis and synthetic cannabis awareness, basic sexual health awareness, and awareness about sexting.
By securing the funding, LANDED can also deliver various services across South Lanarkshire, including: alcohol brief interventions training; upskilling of NHS staff in relation to drugs, alccohol and so-called legal highs; peer-led education in schools; targeted learning in the community; and resource development and social media.
Its quarterly programme of peer education, health inequalities and health improvement activities over the next three years in Lanarkshire will include targeted learning in the community, training and capacity building for staff who work with young people, as well as risk-taking behaviour resource development.
LANDED will also promote risktaking behaviour messages using social media platforms.
The team at LANDED has dramatically turned the project’s fortunes around since 2016, when staff were facing redundancy after a change in the financial landscape left it in a precarious position.
This latest news of the successful bid follows a tranche of funding in recent weeks from the South Lanarkshire Alcohol Drug Partnership, the Voluntary Action Fund and Big Lottery.
The SL Alcohol and Drug Partnership signed a £70,000 a year, three-year contract which, in the first year alone, will see LANDED delivering 12 alcohol brief intervention training courses to raise awarness of alcohol issues among young people.
As part of the same contract, LANDED has been charged with delivering 12 new projects on substance misuse and so-called legal highs.
The cash injection will also fund peer education satellite groups targeting third year pupils.
The funding package from the Voluntary Action Fund totals £26,065 over three years, with an additional £40,000 from the Big Lottery Fund to finance a volunteer development officer.
Project manager Jacqui Flanagan puts this latest funding bid success down to the hard work of her team and the project’s glowing track record for performance delivery and exceeding expectations.
“It is an enormous pat on the back for everyone for doing their jobs so well,” she said.
It’s an enormous pat on the back for everyone doing their job so well