National Lottery funding helps Droylsden service during lockdown

A National Lottery Grant of more than £25,000 allowed a unique hairdressing service helping women with hair loss to go online.  

Community Cutz CIC, based in Droylsden, provide bespoke wigs and pamper workshops through their Better Days project for women experiencing hair loss, either due to cancer treatment or other scalp or hair ailment.

But thanks to the funding from The National Lottery Community Fund, Better Days was able to move its much-needed services online so people could access them in lockdown. 

The group offered virtual wig fitting and maintenance consultations, an online peer support group, as well as sending out wigs and aftercare packages to local women.

The brainchild of hairdressing duo, Wayne and Laura Coyle, the charity also offers affordable hairdressing services and training opportunities for people in the local community.

Operating for more than two and a half years, the idea for the project came about as a result of Laura’s own personal experience which motivated her to help women in her community.

Laura, co-founder of Community Cutz CIC and project lead for Better Days, said: “As somebody who has experienced this first hand with my own mum, I know how important the services we offer are to each individual. That is why we ensure everything we do at Better Days is tailored to each person, to give everybody the service they deserve.”

Better Days also offer one-to-one and group workshops where they teach women everything from scalp and skin care, to practical advice on maintaining their wigs. 

Another aspect of the online sessions is the social interaction, enabling women to talk to each other which helps to reduce feelings of isolation and loneliness. 

With the online sessions carried out through Zoom, many of the workshops run anywhere from 30 to 60 minutes ensuring that all questions are answered. 

In fact, it was the desperate need of the clients to continue getting advice during the pandemic that inspired the group to go online with their services.

Laura said: “Due to the influx of cancer patients contacting Better Days to see if we could help them with the services we would normally offer - we seemed to be more inundated with enquiries than ever before - the general consensus was that people were feeling forgotten about and in despair. 

“We could only assist people with general information in this difficult time, but we knew with the help and support from the National Lottery and a restructure of how the service operates during restrictions of Covid-19 we would be able to offer our services again in a new and safe way for all those shielding.”

Gillian Halliwell, head of funding for the North West at The National Lottery Community Fund, said: “Projects such as Better Days are making an amazing contribution to the community-level response.”

Main image:

ESSENTIAL SERVICE: Suzanne Burke models her new wig.