Friends For Life

Who Are We?

We are a friendship group for people with learning disabilities, mental health needs, and autism spectrum conditions. If you want to make friends and share the same interests, everyone is welcome. Why not come and join us!

'Making friends, making memories'

We go where you would like to go – whether up town, to the country or city, or the seaside. As well as exciting events all year round, we can help you make lasting friendships. We can help you to find events and activities in your local area.

This is how we do it!

• We help you make new friends and develop lasting friendships.
• We organise events that bring us all together within Future Directions and your local area.
• We make sure you wouldn’t be lonely, bored or isolated.
• We make sure you have some great memories – as well as good friends.

How we started

In Spring 2018 the people we support at Future Directions told us that they wanted to make more friends and have lots of things to do.

A group of people supported by Future Directions looked at how we could make things a lot better. The group decided to form the ‘Friends for Life’ group. The group came up with lots of ideas from meeting up monthly to having bigger events throughout the year where people can meet new people and see old friends.

Funding from the National Lottery

The group was successful and awarded a Big Lottery Fund ‘Reaching Communities’ fund of £66,252.00, this is to support the project for two years.

What do we do?

• Go to the cinema: our Cinema Club takes place on at 1pm the last Friday of the month at the Vue cinema in Manchester city centre.
• Go on day trips to Blackpool, Chester Zoo and local theatres.
• Christmas Card Exchange Scheme: over 120 people signed up to the scheme and many people attended the card making sessions at this time.

Do you like what we do?

If you are interested in Friends For Life, or like to know more about our events, please get in touch with Kim Barrett, our Personalisation Lead on 0161 769 9000. Or you could email her via Kimberley.Barrett@futuredirectionscic.co.uk.