NORTH West Ambulance Charity has been awarded a Community Resilience grant from NHS Charities Together through its £1.85 million Community Resilience Grants Fund in partnership with Omaze. The funding was generated through Omaze’s Million Pound House Draw, which raised an incredible £2.6 million to support the vital work of NHS Ambulance Charities in the UK.

This fund is designed to build Community resilience across the North West and the rest of the UK, by equipping more people with the knowledge and confidence to respond to a cardiac arrest. Currently, a person’s chance of survival from a cardiac arrest is less than 10% and fewer than 1 in 10 people survive an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. This grant will go a long way toward improving this stark statistic by more than 50%, by helping with timely access to defibrillation and equipping communities with the lifesaving skills required to deliver CPR whilst waiting for the emergency services to arrive.

Jemma Kinch, Head of North West Ambulance Charity, said:- “We are overwhelmed to be awarded this £142,000 grant in partnership with NHS Charities Together and Omaze. We’re delighted to be delivering this project across the North West to ensure our communities have the skills, resources and training they need to cope in emergencies. We’re looking forward to seeing the difference this funding will have in helping to make sure fewer families aren’t without loved ones.”

The funding from NHS Charities Together will help the North West Ambulance Service (NWAS) strengthen community resilience by maximising coverage of existing defibrillators and focusing on areas where health inequalities, such as high cardiovascular rates and lifestyle factors, are closely correlated. This will be delivered through some of the following initiatives.

Supporting Communities with defibrillation awareness, training and education: This grant will fund training resources for communities, including multilingual and multi-faith training packages. Training equipment such as mannequins and AED trainers, along with IT equipment to enhance the quality of existing training delivered and further strengthen the quality of life-saving CPR administered across our Region.

Support for Community 1st Responder Volunteers- Funds will help support the infrastructure of volunteers delivering community-based life-saving training and education across the North West footprint, including train, the trainer packages for hard-to-reach communities and those facing health inequalities. This training will help ensure more people have the confidence to act quickly during an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest.

Making sure existing defibrillators are ‘rescue ready’ - This grant will provide 3 new roles to support communities with the replenishment of defibrillators and ensuring existing defibrillators are rescue ready. These roles will be responsible for providing CPR and defibrillator training to communities and coordinating community defibrillator volunteers, who will help to provide resources and awareness in the areas most in need.

Mark Evans, Regional Community Engagement Lead for NWAS, said:-  "I’m absolutely delighted that we’ve been awarded this grant. It will make a real difference to communities most in need. This funding allows us to focus on areas where support is critical, helping to educate people on how to potentially save a life. I’m deeply grateful to the North West Ambulance Charity, NHS Charities Together, and everyone who supported the Omaze Million Pound House Draw for making this project possible."

The North West Ambulance Charity works alongside the Ambulance service and in communities across the North West with a focus on funding vital lifesaving equipment, including defibrillators, helping with school education programs and funding additional medical equipment over and above what is already provided by the NHS. To ensure our staff can provide the very best care to patients when they need it most.

In the last year alone, £593,000 was spent by the NWAS charity on innovative wellbeing initiatives for our crews, providing lifesaving equipment for communities, and supporting projects that will help patients in their most critical moments.

For more information about North West Ambulance Charity, please visit the North West Ambulance Charity Website.