Legacy 10

Building work has started on a new £2.8million hydrotherapy pool at the Victoria Education Centre and Sports College in Poole, Dorset, thanks in part to several generous legacy donations. The school for children and young people with complex disabilities is run by disability charity Livability, and in July 2012 their Patron HRH the Princess Royal unveiled a commemorative stone to mark the start of work on the new pool, which should be ready for use by autumn 2013.
The building fund benefited from several legacies, including over £130,000 from a local donor who left instructions for part of her estate to be used for children cared for by the Shaftesbury Society. The society, founded by the seventh Earl of Shaftesbury in 1844, opened Victoria Education Centre in 1958. The Shaftesbury Society merged with another Victorian charity, John Grooms, in 2007 to form Livability, now the largest Christian disability charity in the UK.
Gifts in wills have always been an important contributor to Livability’s income, enabling them to undertake important new building and refurbishment projects, to maintain the standard of care for disabled people which is so often lacking.
Most of the legacies left to Livability are not large, but still very welcome. For example in 2011, the charity received a legacy of £15,000 from a long time supporter. She specified that the gift should go to her local branch of the charity in Norfolk. At the time the John Grooms Court in Norwich was in the process of a major refurbishment of their care facilities for disabled adults; the legacy provided a welcome addition to the development fund.
The charity has tens of thousands of dedicated supporters, some of whom have been involved with either John Grooms or the Shaftesbury Society for several generations. Many of them have promised the charity a gift in their will. This is an important source of funding for the charity and a means by which these families can continue their involvement with the work of Livability.