National Centre Appeal

Our new national centre will allow us to help more families, train more dogs and change more lives. Learn how you can help.

Benefits for the community

The medical conditions and disabilities that Support Dogs cares for affect, either directly or in directly, a large percentage of the UK population. We are therefore keen to find new ways to expand the reach of our services.

This new centre brings the charity into the heart of the city. It will be close to a major residential area, schools, a university, a higher educational college, public transport hubs, public park and a famous and long established football club, allowing the charity to engage with the community in a way that we have never done before.

This includes:

A place for the community to meet & learn

The new centre will be a place where local groups, especially organisations relating to health and disability issues, can meet, learn and share.

Expanding volunteering & employment opportunities

Expanding our capacity to develop volunteering and work experience opportunities. This will include opportunities for members of the community who are retired and also for students with special educational needs or physical disabilities; building on our existing connection with Sheffield College.

Developing services to provide wider community support

This will enable us to develop more community-based animal interaction services to improve the health and wellbeing of a wider number of people - people who would currently struggle to receive any support from us due to our limited capacity. This could be hour-long sessions with children and adults with physical or neurological conditions. This model will allow us to impact on hundreds more families each year in addition to our traditional one-on-one individually-trained support dog partnerships.