Grants scheme for mental health

FCFCG members could benefit from a grants scheme focusing on benefits to mental health and the environment. The charity Mind has been awarded funds from the Big Lottery Fund’s Changing Spaces programme to launch Ecominds, a £7.5million five-year grant scheme. Applications are expected to open in mid-2008. Ecominds will promote the integration of mental health service users into the community via the delivery of environmental projects conducive to good mental and physical health.

Ecominds will help reduce the stigma surrounding mental distress and help create a society that treats people with experience of mental distress fairly, positively, and with respect.

This is a brilliant opportunity for local mind associations to apply for funding to run an environmentally themed project involving mental health service users. There is no limit to what your imagination can desire, but the project must be realistic and achievable.

Projects must meet one or more of these three themes:

- Improve local environments, open spaces, and the countryside whilst making them more accessible and relevant to people’s needs.

- Create a greater sense of community ownership of the local environment, with better collaboration between communities and the voluntary and statutory sectors.

- Improve social, economic, and environmental sustainability.

 

All projects must show that they will also have the following five key features:

- Involve people with direct experience of mental distress at all project levels

- Deliver sustainable projects that enhance the environment

- Encourage diversity and include marginalised and under-represented groups

- Deliver a well-planned and well-managed viable project offering good value and a genuine need within the designated time frame

- Help reduce the stigma and social exclusion of people with mental distress

For more information on the Ecominds grant scheme, or to be contacted when Ecominds is open for applications, visit the website www.ecominds.org.uk