TALBOT Village Trust have donated £10,000 to Poole based sexual abuse support service Acts Fast to help the charity provide an increased level of support to children and families throughout lockdown.

Between April and July, the charity took on 14 new clients, in addition to the 45 already in progress.

Acts Fast provides support, resources and counselling services for children and their families who have been exposed to sexual violence.

Chief Executive Mandy Gulliver said: “We are eternally grateful for the generous donation which has enabled us to continue providing crucial emotional support during this difficult time to our already fragile clients.”

Many of the individuals that the charity helped were already vulnerable and isolated, and their individual situations were lockdown exaggerated by the first national lockdown.

Acts Fast needed to provide extended support outside of its usual operating hours to cover evenings and weekends, in order to cope with the increase in demand for its services.

The Trust’s donation enabled the organisation to fund this increase in operation and allowed staff’s wages to be supplied.

Russell Lucas-Rowe, Trustee at Talbot Village Trust, added: “I would like to thank Mandy and her team for providing such necessary support during these difficult times.

“The lockdown has greatly impacted our communities in so many ways and it was imperative that we supported as many charities as we could with our Covid-19 Fund, to ensure an increase in services could be met.”

Talbot Village Trust’s Covid-19 Support Fund was launched in response to the need for funding to help organisations that were adversely affected by the pandemic.

Applications for the fund have now closed, but the Trust is now accepting grant applications for its usual fund, before the Trustees meet in spring 2021.

Visit www.talbotvillagetrust.org for more information.