British Gymnastics Foundation’s Love to Move Programme has been awarded £50,000 of National Lottery funding from Sport England’s Together Fund.
Sport England’s work and contribution to tackling Inequalities focuses on reducing the negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on activity levels in underrepresented groups, such as people living with dementia. British Gymnastics Foundation’s Love to Move Programme is specially designed to support people living with dementia, increasing their activity levels and improving cognition and memory. Securing this funding will allow the Foundation to support local community organisations to set up new Love to Move sessions with licensed deliverers.
Programme Manager Louise Roberts said: “With this funding we will establish 45 new sustainable sessions by March 2023. This will be a huge asset for communities still overcoming the effects of isolation that COVID-19 had on people living with dementia.”
A real need for Love to Move
The pandemic was such a difficult time for people living with dementia, with research* showing that nearly half of people living with dementia felt a negative impact on their mental health, over 1 in 3 reported having lost confidence in going out and carrying out daily tasks.
Love to Move has been lifechanging for many participants, supporting people to gain back their independence. Research conducted by Age UK showed that “The Programme has a demonstrable benefit in the physical, emotional and cognitive aspects of older people and those older people having mild to advanced forms of dementia appear to benefit the most.”
Ted and Di have been attending Love to Move since before the pandemic. Ted has Alzheimer’s and Di told us “at home Ted can be quite unmotivated, spends a lot of time sitting in his chair and is not very communicative. (At Love to Move) Ted is brighter and more alert, more interested in what’s going on around him, is socializing better with others and laughs more.”
The Together Fund
Tim Hollingsworth, Sport England’s Chief Executive, said:“We are proud to be able to provide funding and support to British Gymnastics Foundation in this difficult period. This funding will help support our valuable community infrastructure that is so important in keeping the nation active and will also provide important connections and reconnections for people whose lives have been affected by COVID-19 and for whom remaining active is so important for their physical, mental and social wellbeing.”
“Thanks to the support of the National Lottery and its players, the Together Fund will be both crucial and central to ensuring no-one is left behind when it comes to having the opportunity to be active during this period.”
You can find out more about our Love to Move sessions and how you can access them by clicking here to visit our Love to Move page here
*The impact of COVID-19 on People Affected by Dementia: Alzheimer’s Society Creative Commons — Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0