Back in March 2023 we launched a mental health project commission, looking for some activity that would support mental health in the West End. The mental health commission was advertised for over five weeks and generated a good deal of interest, with over 170 downloads of the main commission and small ideas form. From this we received fifteen submissions. Funding applications came to a total of £188,000 for a budget of only £50,000. We were obviously not able to fund or assist with all these submissions and unfortunately some projects, despite being good, were not ones we felt able to support at this time.
We had intentionally left the commission brief as open as possible to encourage the widest range of potential mental health activity to come forward. However, we eventually chose to review and prioritize submissions based on pre-agreed criteria.
(1) Significant mental health activity rather than wellbeing,
(2) From groups or organisations that may be less likely to secure other funding,
(3) Potentially innovative, and new rather than continuity of existing work, and
(4) Based in or focused on the West End.
Two projects were chosen to go ahead (see the separate articles on page 6 of the newsletter) but the others, despite some being very good, were not felt to fit what we hoped to see delivered. A couple of the smaller ideas were also of interest, and we are following up on some links with them. One of the issues that has been talked about locally, and was identified directly in our Action Plan, is the need of children and young people’s mental health provision. Sadly, this theme was only taken up by one application in our commission, and unfortunately it wasn’t successful. Because of this we put together a separate project to support a young person’s mental health worker for the West End.
This news story is extracted from the latest WEM Newsletter (Autumn, 2023), which is delivered free to every home in the West End of Morecambe. You can read or download the full newsletter here:
