A pioneering Bradford-based project aimed at helping young people with Sickle Cell disease was today being held up as an example of the type of worthy cause which can benefit from lottery grants.

The project, run by the Al-Falah Youth and Community Centre, which is based in Richmond Road, received its windfall in 1996.

It got £166,110 - over three years - from the National Lottery Charities Board's health, disability and care grants programme.

Now other charities and voluntary organisations are being invited to apply for a grant to undertake medical or social research into health, disability or social care.

The board's health and social research grant programme application line opened today and groups have until October to apply.

Al-Falah's grant was given for its work to help children of Asian and African-Caribbean origin suffering with Sickle Cell - an inherited form of anaemia - and thealassaemia disorders. It is being used to fund an on-going research and development programme run by the centre and Bradford University's social policy research unit.

Aimed at improving the lives of children with the disorder and giving them a bigger say in how improvements can be made it is hoped that if successful the project could eventually be extended countrywide.

The project is looking at how young people with the condition interact with others and what support services are available to them.

Gerald Oppenheim, director of UK and corporate planning for the charities board, said: "This programme gives charities involved in health, medicine, disability and social care a chance to apply for research funding.

Bradford's Al-Falah Centre benefited from the board's first round of grants supporting medical and social research and was part of £8.6 million given out to 56 projects in 1996.

Other groups to benefit included the Imperial Cancer Research Foundation, Age Concern, the British Diabetic Association and the Children's Liver Disease Foundation.

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