A CHARITY that gives free therapy for youngsters and young individuals with additional needs has been awarded £600,000 by the Strategic Mission and Ministry Investment Board (SMMIB).
A press release issued by Church House on Thursday said that, through the three-year programme, greater than 800 churches would “receive support to welcome children and young individuals with additional must their worship services”. The SMMIB award represents a major investment for the charity, exceeding its total annual income in 2024 of £520,217.
Growing Hope was founded by Dr Naomi Fox, a children’s occupational therapist, in 2017, with the establishment of the primary clinic arrange in partnership with an area church: King’s Cross Church. (Interview, 23 July 2021). There are actually clinics in eight other churches offering services including occupational therapy, physiotherapy, speech and language therapy and counselling. The charity goals to have 20 such clinics by 2030. Referrals are accepted from anyone who has gained consent from the kid’s primary caregiver and the charity also offers the “When dreams change” course for folks of youngsters with additional needs.
The award from the SMMIB comes under the Partnerships Funding stream, set as much as “addresses a spot or barrier that currently inhibits delivery of the Church’s Vision and Strategy”. A complete of £46.9 million is to be allocated in the present triennium.
The £600,000 is meant to fund the launch of a programme to increase the Growing Hope’s accessibility training to 375 churches. In addition, 475 churches will explore the Growing Hope Accessibility Award, which helps churches to point that they’re able to welcome families with a spread of needs. As of 2024, ten such awards had been given. A survey of 87 parents of youngsters and young individuals with additional needs who discover as Christian, carried out by the charity, found that 88 per cent of said that attending church was currently or had previously been a challenge.
The training, designed by Dr Fox, involves “guidance on cultural and perception shifts of youngsters’s ‘behaviour’ in congregations, sensory-aware modifications to the environment and repair, and structural or practical change to buildings — a lot of that are at little or zero cost. It takes into consideration the sensible constraints of ancient buildings, heritage preservation requirements and church patterns of worship and teaching.”
Among the nine churches offering a clinic, and having received accessibility training, is St James the Great, Downley, in High Wycombe. Since the launch of a Messy Church with accessibility features including visual schedules, multi-sensory activities and movement breaks, the church, which previously had no children in its congregation, welcomes six families who previously had no reference to the church. The church also provides sensory tents, fidget toys and ear defenders at Sunday services.
Among the churches which have received an Accessibility Award is St Luke’s, Downham in south east London. Displaying this on the church website prompted an inquiry from an area family “desperate to have their two children with significant additional needs baptised, but nervous that they could find the church environment too formal”, the Church House press release said. Two years later, the family are still attending.
“Most churches which have engaged with Growing Hope report [are] welcoming five to 10 latest families into their worshipping community, with some commenting that each family that has joined since includes someone with additional needs,” in accordance with the press release.
The latest funded project, designed with diocesan disability advisers, shall be piloted by Growing Hope with a gaggle of churches in five dioceses.
Growing Hope’s service can be found to all. Its website states: “We imagine that Jesus offers hope to everyone and that he knows and loves each of us; our therapists are motivated by this.” Each clinic manager also serves as a part of the church’s staff team on Sunday mornings and works to “enable a greater level of accessibility inside church”. Therapists will all the time offer to hope for the kid and their carer at each session.
In 2021, it received a grant of £258,000 grant from the Allchurches Trust (News, 7 May 2021).
