We are looking for new trustees to join our committed and friendly Board. The Board appoints independent Trustees from a wide range of backgrounds and walks of life. Our membership elects member Trustees to ensure that all our work is grounded in the insight, practice, and ambitions of the organisations who make up our membership work directly with people and communities.
We welcome and encourage applications from people of all backgrounds. We particularly encourage applications from people from diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds, disabled people and people from the LGBT+ community with skills in the areas identified above as we work towards becoming a fully representative Board.
We currently run the following projects
Our Linkworking Project has been running for 10 years. We currently run sixteen sessions a week on the inpatient wards at the Bethlem Royal Hospital and in the community resource centres. These sessions are followed by a handover with ward/service managers to address immediate needs. Our project supports service users to understand their treatment, services available to them and brings hope during dark and difficult times, in fact many of our team joined after coming into contact with the project themselves. Our outcomes and qualitative data provide insight for the CCG and have a positive impact on local commissioning.
We run 10 Mental Health Open Forums each year. It is designed for service users to come together in a safe environment to meet commissioners and Service Providers, giving them a chance to ask questions and debate current and topical issues/services relevant to their recovery and wellbeing. Our forums also attract large numbers of carers and professionals.
Our Welfare Benefit Surgery has helped thousands of vulnerable people make and maintain benefit claims. We also attend assessments and have won over 100% ESA & PIP tribunals. We support claimants to maintain their On-Line Universal Credit (UC) Claims; which is a major obstacle as many of our clients are illiterate or have no computer experience. We address immediate financial poverty through access to food banks and Discretionary Payments. Currently we work very closely with Mind’s Welfare Benefits service and have close relationships with SLaM, Croydon Council and the DWP.
