London-based mental health schemes receive £500,000 funding boost

Community organisations providing mental health services to people in London have received more than £500,000 funding to develop their services.

The funding, from City Bridge Trust, The City of London Corporation’s charity, follows more than £14 million the Trust has awarded over the past 20 years for mental health projects.

Some of the organisations to benefit from the City Bridge Trust grants include Derman, which received £95,950 to deliver bi-lingual accredited counselling for people experiencing mental health issues, including depression. 

Elsewhere, the Guild of Psychotherapists was awarded £76,200 to fund the role of a part-time clinic coordinator and expand their psychotherapy service to black and minority ethnic communities in South London.

Covent Garden Dragon Hall Trust received £87,000 to help meet the increased demand for services from older people and carers, many of whom experience from loneliness and depression.  

Lambeth and Southwark Mind was awarded £147,400 towards the salary costs of their CEO and clinical director, along with the costs of developing a new free psychotherapy service.

Meanwhile, Claremont Project (Islington) received £143,850 to support the Flourishing Lives Collaborative, which supports the day centre sector to provide better quality, more tailored services for older people, reducing loneliness and depression.

Another charity working with older people, Age UK Waltham Forest, was given £35,000 to continue the expansion of its pool of volunteers, who help deliver its activity programme, keeping older people active and engaged which improves their mental and physical health.

David Farnsworth, director of the City Bridge Trust, said: “City Bridge Trust provides grants totalling around £20 million per year towards charitable activity benefitting Greater London.

“We have donated over half a million to mental health projects in the last month alone including those which provide counselling and psychotherapy, exercise classes and social events.

“And we are committed to supporting Londoners to help make our city a fairer place in which to live and work.”

City Bridge Trust is the grant-making arm of Bridge House Estates which continues to maintain the bridges that cross the Thames into the City of London at no expense to the taxpayer. For the past two decades, funds surplus to the bridge requirements have been used to support charitable activity across the capital.  Awards totalling more than £330 million have been made to some 4,000 organisations working with the most disadvantaged people across every London borough.