Axe fear for help service

Managers of a support service today warned it will be axed if £64,000 is not found within three days.

Healthy Help, which has helped people to claim £4 million in extra benefits and improved thousands of lives, needs the cash to continue the service next year.

But managers at Telford & Wrekin Primary Care Trust have refused to match fund Lottery cash which could have been secured by the Citizens Advice Bureaux for the scheme.

The Lottery money is conditional on matching the amount locally.Last month, CAB managers revealed that the project, which is a partnership with Dial Shropshire Telford and Wrekin, would have to be axed by the end of December if the matched funding was not found.

Healthy Help was launched four years ago and has helped more than 2,000 people with debt, benefit, housing and employment problems.

Despite urgent appeals for sponsors, nobody has come forward and now time is running out.

CAB managers said that they were hopeful of a reprieve, but have so far been unable to track down a sponsor.

Lyn Brayne, service director, said: "We are extremely hopeful for a sponsor to continue with a project which dramatically impacts on peoples' lives.

"We have until December 31 to find an individual organisation which wants to secure the project for at least another two years.

"We are disappointed the PCT has not contacted us to explain why they have been unable to help us. We trust they will contact us in due course."

Healthy Help was funded by the Lottery's Community Fund, which paid for the GP-referral scheme to run for four years, until the end of this year.

The money would have allowed the project to run for another two years. Two full-time advisers and other full-time administration staff face losing their jobs if the project is not saved. The PCT declined to comment.

Anybody who can help save the project by offering sponsorship should contact the CAB

on (01952) 287710.

By Kirsty Marston