We’re very pleased to announce that our Kirklees employment service has won a grant of £95,095 through the Job Centre Plus as part of the DWP Flexible Support Fund.

The grant will fund a one year programme working with pre-Work Programme claimants presenting with mental health issues. The service will offer a focused programme of activity over a 12 week period to support people into paid or voluntary work or other provision, such as education.  The project will work with people in Kirklees and Calderdale and it’s a great opportunity for us to extend our employment services into Calderdale where there is currently no service at all. It will be a way for us to begin building relationships with other agencies and further develop conversations with Calderdale mental health commissioners about the need for a full service in the area, which we will be well placed to deliver.

Well done to everyone who played a part in securing this vital funding.

For further information about employment services in the Kirklees area please click here.
 

Our innovative Face 2 Face project in Dorset, Bournemouth and Poole has been awarded a grant of £39,950 to to help tackle mental health stigma and discrimination by national campaign Time to Change.

Face 2 Face is managed by Richmond Fellowship in partnership with community interest company ZooFish Arts and the Borough of Poole Arts Service and will be led by people with mental health problems. The project will aim to establish meaningful and open conversations with others in the local area, bringing people who don’t have mental health problems into social contact with those who do. Evidence suggests that this kind of contact is one of the most effective ways of breaking down stigma and discrimination.

Face 2 Face will use creative activities to draw in members of the public and create opportunities for one-to-one conversations. Trained volunteers will attend festivals and community events across Dorset and run simple arts based activities and workshops. These will lead to discussions on mental health and chances for volunteers to share their own experiences of mental health problems.

Doug Low, Richmond Fellowship locality manager, said: “We’re hoping to recruit up to 30 volunteers to work on the Face 2 Face project who have lived experience of mental ill-health.”
  
Time to Change is England’s mental health anti-stigma programme run by the charities Mind and Rethink Mental Illness and funded by the Department of Health, Comic Relief and the Big Lottery Fund.  The programme is distributing grants to local community-led projects as part of its drive to improve public attitudes and behaviour in relation to mental health.

For information about the grants please visit www.time-to-change.org.uk/grants

For more information about the project or to enquire about becoming a Face 2 Face volunteer please contact Doug Low on 07786 191192 or email doug.low@richmondfellowship.org.uk

Richmond Fellowship and innovative Midlands-based community mental health social enterprise My Time CIC are joining forces.

The two organisations are entering into a formal partnership which will enable them to strengthen and improve the services they can offer to support people with mental health problems.

Richmond Fellowship has pioneered and practised social inclusion and recovery for more than 50 years and is now one of the biggest voluntary sector providers of mental health care in England. It offers a wide range of housing, care, employment and community support, helping more than 9,000 people every year.

My Time CIC is an award-winning, innovative service user-led multi-lingual community mental health provider working in the West Midlands. In 12 years it has developed community based solutions to increasing levels of depression, anxiety, low self-esteem and long-term mental health issues.

Richmond Fellowship chief executive Derek Caren said: “We’re really excited about the potential innovation and community-based solutions that My Time can bring to Richmond Fellowship. We’ve been proactively seeking out formal partnerships with like-minded, successful organisations to help us achieve our mission of making recovery reality for the thousands of people we support each year.”

My Time chief executive Michael Lilley said: “We’re delighted to be forming this partnership.  The philosophical approaches of My Time and Richmond Fellowship are closely aligned, both being service user led.  With the needs of service users right at the heart of everything we do, we believe we can build on our philosophy and our complementary services to continue to fully support individuals suffering with mental ill health.  My Time will also benefit from the financial strength provided by the much larger Richmond Fellowship.”

My Time will remain a community interest company in its own right and continue to provide and manage its own services. for more information about My Time visit its website: www.mytime.org.uk