Oakfield Community are overjoyed after receiving £140k of National Lottery funding
Local charity, Oakfield Community, is celebrating after being awarded just over £140,000 in National Lottery funding to support its vision to enable adults with moderate to severe learning disabilities and autism to live meaningful and active lives.
The charity, based across two services in Easton Maudit and Yardley Hastings, will use the money to develop Oakfield’s day opportunities services, allowing training and development for people with a range of learning disabilities.
Oakfield Community was founded in 1981 and is an established provider of accommodation, care, and support for adults with learning disabilities in Northamptonshire. The day opportunities service is a more recent venture, including their Seed-to-Plate and Care Farm Projects, a hands-on opportunity for people with learning disabilities to learn about our natural world.
Oakfield Community currently run two sessions of Seed-to-Plate and Care Farm sessions per week, attended by both the people they support at Easton Maudit and Yardley Hastings, as well as external attendees. Those attending can join in activities such as animal keeping, planting, tending to, harvesting and cooking with crops, wood craft, habitat creation and nature-based activities. The projects have many benefits for attendees, such as increasing independence and confidence, learning new skills, making friends, and understanding and building a positive attitude towards the environment and nature. The meaningful activities also impact the wider community through environmental and sustainability benefits.
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 see these weekly sessions expanded to cover ten sessions per week over a period of three years, allowing more attendees to join, and building each project to be self-sufficient.
At the same time, Oakfield Community can continue to expand the Care Farm and Seed-to-Plate areas, ensuring the site in the heart of the countryside at Easton Maudit remains a calm learning environment for all attendees.
Sara Morrison, Chair of Trustees, says: “We’re delighted that The National Lottery Community Fund has recognised our work at Oakfield Community. Now, thanks to National Lottery players we will be able to develop our project, make it available to a larger number of people, and offer a greater variety of activities. This is important because it will provide opportunities for more people, make the project sustainable for the future and secure our long-term vision. We are holding an Open Day on the 20th of September to showcase our seed-to-plate and care farm projects and would love to see new visitors and organisations attend, please contact us if you would be interested.”
Lisa Munro, parent of Max and Billy, says: “As a parent of adults with Autism it is always a huge challenge to find activities where Max and Billy are motivated. Both of my sons love the outdoors and doing activities which are practical. During their time living at Oakfield, the opportunities for day activities has continued to improve. The addition of Seed to Plate and Care Farm Projects have been fantastic for my sons, it enables them to be in the outdoors whilst gaining a wealth of new skills, allowing them to continue to develop. Due to their Autism sometimes they can find things hard, especially Billy but the staff at Oakfield are exceptional and work closely with myself to ensure my sons get the high quality support they both deserve.”
The National Lottery Community Fund recently launched its strategy, ‘It starts with community’, which will underpin its efforts to distribute at least £4 billion of National Lottery funding by 2030.
As part of this, the funder has four key missions, which are to support communities to come together, be environmentally sustainable, help children and young people thrive and enable people to live healthier lives.
National Lottery players raise over £30 million a week for good causes across the UK. Thanks to them, last year (2023/24) The National Lottery Community Fund awarded over half a billion pounds (£686.3 million) of life-changing funding to communities across the UK, supporting over 13,700 projects to turn their great ideas into reality.
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