DOMESTIC abuse victims have been handed a vital lifeline thanks to a massive funding boost for a Bolton charity.

Endeavour has been awarded a £414,639 grant from the National Lottery to expand its work supporting people and animals who are experiencing or recovering from domestic abuse.

The cash injection, which will be delivered over the next five years, has come at the perfect time for the charity, which was facing up to the prospect of making redundancies before getting the good news.

Carole Marsden, director of services at the Chorley New Road charity, also known as Paws for Kids, said: “If we hadn’t got this money then we would have been looking at making staff redundant. That would have drastically cut the service that we are able to offer people.

“Now we can not only continue to offer the service, but enhance it.

“We want to use this money to reach more sections of the Bolton community, where people have not necessarily identified with the existing domestic abuse services — the BME and gay communities, particularly.

“The statistics show that the traditional services are predominantly accessed by white women. We hope that this money will not only secure our future, but also go a long way to creating more healthy relationships and preventing violence.”

The charity has provided support for people and their pets across Bolton for 19 years and has five established services.

This grant will be used to part-fund its Safe Haven outreach project.

She added: “There are a lot of schemes that help people when they are already in a violent situation, but we want to do some more preventative work.

“We have seen our work develop and the nature of domestic abuse change over the years, so there needs to be a new approach.

“It is not just about a woman leaving a violent man and going into a refuge. We also work with same sex couples and with men suffering abuse.

“What we want to do is to prevent domestic abuse and provide education about safe relationships, not wait until things get to a critical point.

“The Safe Haven project is part-funded by the local authority, who are very supportive but have difficult decisions of their own to make. Over the years, funding has become harder for us to source. The money we get from the council has not increased since 2006, so that is effectively a cut in reality.”

The funding comes from The Big Lottery’s Reaching Communities Programme which aims to help those most in need and build stronger communities.

Endeavour is the only service in the North West that works with both humans and animals escaping domestic abuse.