In June 2025 we were pleased to announce that The National Lottery Community Fund (Awards for All) awarded the National Mikey Powell Memorial Family Fund (NMPMFF) £19,984 in grant funding to further the commitments from our Development Plans.

One of our plans for the future includes Bereavement & Counselling Hubs, ensuring that families affected by custody deaths and killings can get quick, easy and free or subsidised access to mental health, wellbeing and bereavement support in their local area.

Part of the recent Lottery grant will support the NMPMFF Therapy Care Initiative Pilot.

This is a 1-year programme that will identify up to 14 recently bereaved UK families that require therapeutic support. By 'recently bereaved' we mean families, children or young people that have been affected by deaths or killings in state institutions within the last 18 months.

The type of therapeutic support that the families want to access will be determined by them and any support agencies that they work with, and can include traditional counselling or talking therapies, animal-assisted, art, behavioural, cognitive or creative therapies etc.

We will be working with our Assessment Partners and other community-based parties to identify the 14 families that will be involved in the pilot.

Some key advisories:

1. Applicants will need to have been assisted to access the Therapy Care Initiative's support by one of our Assessment Partners or a recognised community agency or enterprise that supports affected families.
2. Assessment Partners or a recognised community agency or enterprise will refer families to the NMPMFF engagement team.
3. Applicants can be from any region within the UK, but if they are not already a registered family with the NMPMFF they would need to do so.
4. The NMPMFF will contribute a fixed amount towards the agreed therapeutic sessions or a course of support.
5. Payments would be made directly to the service provider chosen by the family.
6. Participating families would also be eligible for awards from our Holiday Fund of £100.00 towards a respite or holiday break.
   

Plans to extend the Therapy Care Initiative in the future!

It is our hope that the success of the pilot initiative will demonstrate the continued need for a very specific type of support needed by families affected by the severe trauma of losing a loved one at the hands of statutory and state institutions that should have cared for and protected them.

We will be seeking to secure a major investment from 2026/2027 onwards, so that a more comprehensive version of this pilot can be rolled out, and thereby extending the support to significantly more families.

Further updates to follow.