Two local groups feel benefit of Lotto funds
WICKLOW Mental Health Association and Bray Cardiac First Responders are among the community services to have benefited from National Lottery funding.
Taoiseach Leo Varadkar announced that €5 billion has been raised for good causes all over Ireland in the past 30 years since the start of the National Lottery. Mr Varadkar said that the Good Cause Fund has made a crucial contribution to life in communities all across Ireland over the last three decades.
The thousands of Wicklow Good Cause beneficiaries include the Wicklow Mental Health Association and Bray Cardiac First Responders.
These days promoting positive mental health is so important, which is why the work carried out by organisations like Wicklow Mental Health Association is vital to its community.
Based in Wicklow town, the group caters for 50 local clients and serves the community through monthly information evenings and a range of programmes and events.
According to chairperson, Charlie Burke, the association received €15,500 from National Lottery Good Causes funding between 2015 and 2016, which helped to support various services and programmes. In 2015, €2,500 in funding allowed the expansion of its social club, where it purchased craft materials, cookery equipment, physical exercise equipment and gardening items, enabling service users to improve their fitness and craft and cookery skills.
The group also received €2,000 in 2016 to expand the peer-led social club to include guided nature walks. Its plans for this funding also include Nordic walking and tai chi in woodlands.
€2,000 was received for the delivery of suicide prevention programmes and €3,000 to provide a Wellness Action Recovery Plan, which provides clients with a personal recovery plan which helps them to maintain their own wellness and provide potential to support others.
As managing mental illness can be debilitating, €6,000 was received to fund outings and short holidays for clients with limited resources. This included a mid-week break at Leitrim Marina Hotel, with activity days at Lough Key Forest and Activity Park in Roscommon and an outing to Belvedere House in Mullingar.
‘ The outings provided a welcome break for service users,’ Charlie said. ‘ They felt they were beneficial and improved their well-being, as well as enabling them to build positive relationships.’
In the event of requiring an emergency defibrillator in Bray, the chances of locating one nearby have been greatly increased thanks to Bray Cardiac First Responders.
This group has 30 volunteers, 25 of whom are on-call responders who work with the National Ambulance Service (NAS), and answer calls for cardiac arrest, chest pain, choking, stroke and collapse. They aim to arrive to the patient before the ambulance and begin treating them while awaiting the paramedics.
Many people in Bray owe their lives to the first responder service, as they have attended 888 NAS calls since they were established four years ago.
Part of their work includes running the Public Access Defibrillation scheme, which involves placing defibrillators in public locations around the town so that, in the event of an emergency, trained members of the public can use them.
To this end, the group has trained almost 800 members of the community in CPR and defibrillator use.
According to coordinator Marc Windsor, the group decided to apply for National Lottery Good Causes funding in 2016 to place four additional defibrillators in parts of the town that weren’t covered.
It received €8,000 just before Christmas and already has three defibrillators in place. Marc feels that these have been a vital addition to the community.
‘By giving early access to defibrillation, it increases the chance of survival of any person who enters cardiac arrest,’ he said.