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£125,000 Community Mental Health Grants awarded
Humber Teaching NHS Foundation Trust and HEY Smile Foundation have released over £125,000 via the Community Mental Health Grant Programme
The grant programme helps voluntary groups to deliver activities to improve mental health and wellbeing within their local communities. Since July 2022, 27 projects supporting over 2,000 people across the Humber region, have benefited from the grant. The grants focus is on projects helping to prevent people from becoming seriously unwell with mental health problems.
The range of activities funded so far is varied, including: educational projects: arts projects; gardening schemes and exercise projects.
One such organisation to receive help from the grant is Toranj Tuition.
The film and book club project aims to boost the social lives and confidence of immigrants. They received a £5,000 mental health grant so they could host a weekly session during the next six months.
Pedram Saeid, director of Toranj Tuition, said: “We were able to reach forgotten people. People living isolated and lonely lives. Many of them have suffered trauma in their home country. They have a range of mental health conditions. We wanted to give them the chance to remove barriers to socialising and to improve their mental health.”
Kids Yorkshire also received a grant of £5,000 to deliver training to 50 parent carers in Hull and East Yorkshire. The programme aims to improve health and wellbeing among parents of children with additional needs and disabilities by promoting greater empowerment, resilience and confidence of parent carers.
Parents are encouraged to take small steps associated with better health and wellbeing and to set achievable goals and take a problem-solving approach. Claire Crosbie, a senior fundraiser for Kids Yorkshire, said: “During the project we learned the importance of empowering parent carers to look after themselves. Parent carer resilience is often overlooked and being able to give parent cares opportunities to explore their own resilience is vital to help them with their caring role.”
Groundwork Yorkshire received funding to improve their Shed activities, helping to invest into their volunteers to continue their weekly sessions.
Karen Tozer, programme manager for Groundwork, said: “People come along to be creative and to be with other people. They’re not defined by their mental health or any other labels they really are just part of a family.”
Grant programme aims:
- Enable local level peer-led activities that will empower personal wellbeing
- Explore new ways to deliver and connect mental health support within communities
- Listen, learn and adapt community-led activities to improve personal resilience to wellbeing and mental health
The scheme's part of a much bigger plan to transform services for people with mental health problems.
How to Apply
- Applicants should either be a charity, not-for profit company or voluntary and community group
- Activities must engage residents living within Hull and East Riding
- Demonstrate understanding of local need to support the proposed project
- Register onto www.beecan.org
- Click on find funding programmes and search Community Mental Health
Before applying, please make sure you review the grant policy and guidance.
