Janice Brockbank and Brenda Holden

Two women from West Cumbria were the 2022 recipients of the Peter Scott Award for Outstanding Contribution to Charity.

Janice Brockbank and Brenda Holden are the seventh and eighth people to receive the annual Award, first given in 2014 in memory of local business man and philanthropist Peter Scott CBE, of the Provincial Insurance Company.

Their Award recognises both women’s work to ensure parents in the Millom area get the support they need to bond with their baby during the first 1001 days of life. It is, they say, the first community infant-mental health service of its kind in Cumbria.

After a decade of work to secure funding by Janice, and two years when both women came together to tackle operational aspects, the specialist preventative support needed to strengthen the parent-infant relationship is in place. As a result of that a Good Enough Start (GES) pilot is now running as a collaboration between the Howgill Family Centre, Cumbria NHS Partnership Foundation Trust and the Partnership of Millom Schools.

The award comes with a grant of £2,500, which will be shared between a new GES Baby Essentials Service for Millom families in crisis and Howgill’s Babbling Babies at Cleator Moor.