Amazing Grace!

Well... what a day!

Many of you will know that the last few months have been full of stress and uncertainty, with massive cuts to our work funding meaning that our charity’s continued existence has been hanging in the balance. Despite mental health apparently being a major government priority, we have now lost all our funding from the local NHS, the local authority and Public Health. The reason being that all their budgets have been cut to the marrow by central government, NHS England and Public Health England. We’re not a frontline service, we don’t provide clinical support to people and so we’re not viewed as being important enough in a statutory sense...

However, what we do provide is a channel through which the voices of people who experience mental distress can be heard, listened to and acted upon. The organisation has worked for over 20 years - with only 2 or 3 staff members at any point - to produce research which has changed policy and practice and benefited thousands of mental health service users, their families and carers - and, we hope, we’ve also had an impact by providing a range of free activities, events and forums which have prevented people from needing to use costly services at all.

And now, the day after my colleague, Sarah, had her redundancy notice issued, I’ve received news that a funding application we made to the Wellcome Trust has been successful! The organisation has been saved at 3 minutes to midnight!

There’s still a lot of decisions and plans to be made. Still all sorts of things to ponder. But the immediate crisis is over! I’ve spent most of the day in shock!

So it was great to end the day in celebratory mode at the Everyman theatre with the brilliant comedian and all round excellent human being, Josie Long (whom I blipped back in March https://www.blipfoto.com/entry/2288245277242426533 ), the very entertaining musical comedy duo Jonny and the Baptists, and the wonderfully warm and passionately political singer, Grace Petrie. It was the final night of their ‘Lefty Scum’ tour and there was an end-of-term feeling about the proceedings which felt just perfect.

Today’s Blip is of Grace, struggling valiantly with a virus but still in excellent voice and very good spirits.

And here’s what’s probably her best-known song, ‘Farewell to Welfare’ - written back in the days when Theresa May was still ‘just’ the Home Secretary and Minister for Women and Equalities (having consistently voted against Equalities legislation throughout her career...) www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkNT3ktaX7Y

Love and comradeship to all! X