Luna Foundation celebrates after receiving £10,000 of National Lottery funding to improve support for children and young people after by parental suicide
Luna Foundation CIC, a social enterprise operating on a nationwide basis, is today celebrating after being awarded £10,000 in National Lottery funding to support its work to improve the support for children and young people who lose a parent or carer to suicide. Luna will use the money to develop its Luna Lived Experience Network, all of whom lost a parent to suicide during childhood and now use their experience to help improve the support for others who experience the same type of loss. It will also be used to develop a trainer handbook for Luna’s growing pool of facilitators, many of whom are drawn from the Lived Experience Network, who deliver Luna Suicide Bereavement Training for people who work with children and young people.
Luna has been running since March 2023 and has already trained almost 450 professionals to provide the best possible care to children and young people impacted by parental suicide. It was founded by CEO Anna Wardley, who lost her dad to suicide when she was 9 and carried out international research as a Churchill Fellow into how support can be improved in the UK.
Luna has developed evidence-based training that is delivered online, and has already been delivered in seven regions of England. Luna has also produced 14 helpful guides for professionals and families focused on supporting children and young people after suicide bereavement, and has also developed a suicide bereavement policy template for education settings.
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 help Luna to transform the support available to children and young people after a parent dies by suicide across the UK.
Anna Wardley, founder and CEO of Luna Foundation, 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 forge ahead with our mission to create a web of support for children and young people impacted by parental suicide by training those who they come into daily contact with and provide them with a range of resources to help them provide the best possible support. This is vital as we know how important it is for these young people to get timely and appropriate support to mitigate the long-term risks to their own mental health.”
Clare Foster, Luna Lived Experience Network facilitator, says: “The Luna Lived Experience Network members have played such a key role since Luna was set up. They have been involved in developing and delivering our training, reviewing guides and policies for people working with children and young people and sharing their powerful testimonies at public events. They are at the heart of all the work we do at Luna and we are so grateful to them for sharing their own experiences of parental suicide for the benefit of others.”
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.
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