New £350,000 Brain Injury Foundation Centre opens | Latest Newry News, Newry Sport and Newry Business for Newry City

New £350,000 Brain Injury Foundation Centre opens

The Space & Place programme and The Brain Injury Foundation have officially opened a new £350,000 centre providing a permanent, dedicated centre of excellence for brain injury survivors, their carers and family members.

brain15Built with a grant of £350,000 from the Space & Place programme, the centre is on the outskirts of Newry in Camlough.

It will allow the Brain Injury Foundation to continue to minimise isolation and enhance the confidence of their members enabling them to socialise, develop their communication skills, learn new skills and engage fully in their local community.

The Space & Place Programme is a £15million, five year capital grants project that seeks to provide an opportunity for local communities to come together to identify a shared vision for their area and work together to deliver it.

Funded by the Big Lottery Fund, the programme is managed by the Community Foundation for Northern Ireland in conjunction with the Northern Ireland Housing Executive, Public Health Agency, NI Environmental Link, Rural Community Network and Groundwork NI.

brain14Frank Hewitt, the Big Lottery Fund’s NI Chair, said, “It’s wonderful to see how the Brain Injury Foundation have transformed this building with funding from the Space & Place programme. We are looking forward to seeing the difference the new centre will make to people affected by brain injury and their families.”

Space & Place Programme Coordinator Michael Hughes said, “We are delighted to be announcing the opening of this amazing centre. The Space & Place programme is here to help connect communities together and the Brain Injury Foundation are doing that by helping those with brain injuries, and their families and carers, to integrate into the wider community.

Michael added, “The Brain Injury Foundation has worked tirelessly to complete this work and we can’t congratulate them enough on their efforts.”

brain13Frank Dolaghan, Chair of the Brain Injury Foundation, said, “Our motivation in developing this first community owned brain injury centre of excellence in Northern Ireland stems entirely from the needs of our members, both brain injury survivors and carers.

“The centre, named ‘Our House’ by one of our brain injury survivors, is intended to be just that – a place which is welcoming and inclusive, open, homely and comfortable. It is full of warmth and positivity. It is a base from which our members can build and maintain linkages with our local community.

“Above all, it is owned and controlled by our members. We are indebted to the Space and Place team, to our builders and our professional advisers and all our other supporters for helping so much to bring us to this very exciting stage in our development.

Frank added, “We have even more dynamic plans for the future and look forward to everyone’s continuing support.”

Short URL: https://newrytimes.com/?p=53155

Posted by on Oct 19 2015. Filed under Community, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry

Leave a Reply







Find us on Facebook

Log in | Designed by Gabfire themes