Seven local charities across West Berkshire, Reading and Wokingham (known collectively as ‘Berkshire West’) can now do even more vital work to improve the health and wellbeing of local residents after being awarded small grants to support projects with a focus on communities within Berkshire West at risk of experiencing health inequalities.

The charities – Berkshire Women’s Aid, Cianna’s Smile, Daisy’s Dream, No5 Youth Counselling, Refugee Support Group, Sport in Mind and Time to Talk received around £24,000 between them in grants after BOB ICB asked for bids from local charities for inequality projects with a focus on mental health.

The funding will help these charities carry out their work in the following ways:

• Cianna’s Smile supports children and families in the Thames Valley with Sickle Cell disease which is a lifelong debilitating condition affecting ethnic minority communities. The funding will go towards activities including Youth art therapy workshops, Carers workshops and Mental health first aid training for staff/volunteers. The outcomes expected will be increased confidence, resilience and aspirations, empowering them by addressing the challenges they face making them feel more integrated into communities, reduced social isolation and loneliness enabling them to make, build, sustain support structures and peer to peer age-appropriate friendships; improved social relationships and family support; reduction of stress for the carer and family, leading to greater levels of patience and increasing well-being.
• Berkshire Women’s Aid (BWA) has been working throughout West Berkshire delivering support services for Domestic Abuse survivors for 45 years. Children and Young People Services are central to BWA, with dedicated programmes for 5-17 year olds. The funding will support them in providing specialist age-appropriate programmes for children and young people support to support their recovery from the physical, emotional and psychological effects of domestic abuse. The programme for primary school children enhances self-esteem and gives children the safe space to talk and let them know it is not their fault while the programme for 12-17 year olds will cover healthy relationships, resolving conflicts, safe-planning and rebuilding confidence.
• Daisy’s Dream is a local charity committed to supporting children and young people through bereavement. The funding will allow them to provide pre- and post-bereavement sessions for children and young people in Reading, Wokingham and West Berkshire. The support will be highly tailored to the individual and will consist of a combination of individual, group and telephone support as appropriate.
• N05 Youth Counselling is a charity which provides free, confidential and professional mental health support for 11-25 year olds. Young people, and those around them, tell us they need access to peer led, professionally informed, mental health education to support them to know what mental health is, what is normal, how to help themselves and their peers, where to go for help, and how to ask for it. N05 will provide a series of informative events led by young people for young people to educate, normalise and destigmatise mental health and wellbeing for young people, in a safe, co-designed and co-delivered way – meeting young people where they are and delivering messages that they need, in the way they are asking for, with a joint young person and professional voice.
• Refugee Support Group provides legal and practical support for asylum seekers and refugees in Berkshire. With this funding they will run Homework and Support groups where older students help refugee children to complete their homework and support them with adapting to a new curriculum.  Alongside supporting children with their education, the homework clubs will also serve to provide regular social activities and peer support for children at high risk of isolation. In addition, through working closely with attendees on a regular basis, the Homework Club coordinator (trained in mental health first aid) will be able to recognise warning signs of trauma or deteriorating mental health and then support children and their families to access appropriate mental health treatment through engaging with RSGs casework team. They will also share information about support available for children who have experienced trauma and act as an initial point of contact for parents who have concerns about their child’s mental health.
• Sport in Mind is an independent mental health charity that was formed in Berkshire in 2011 to improve the lives of people experiencing mental health problems through sport and physical activity. They work with adults with serious mental illness, and Children and young people struggling with their mental health supporting schools, the early help team and the children and adolescent mental health services. With this funding they will provide a one-hour weekly sport and multi games session in Reading for approximately 12 young people, aged 9-14. The sessions are aimed at young people with mild to more complex mental health challenges. This will provide young people with strategies to release tension and stress and use them in their everyday life to manage their mental health. They will also be provided a wellbeing journal to help them write and draw their thoughts and feelings, tracking their activity progress and associated moods. It includes information on improving physical wellbeing, eating healthily, sleep habits and being more active.
• Time to Talk West Berkshire promote and support the mental health and emotional wellbeing of young people aged 11-25 in West Berkshire providing vital access to free counselling and mental health services, working in collaboration with schools, GPs and the emotional health team at the council. This funding will contribute to T2T’s effort to provide a supported online programme which helps in changing behaviour and can teach tools and skills to break unhelpful patterns which cause stress, anxiety and low mood. This programme enables T2T to reduce their waiting list, provide early support to young people and provide them with easy access to mental health support.

With a thank you for their support to Reading Voluntary Action, Involve Community Services Wokingham and Volunteer Centre West Berkshire.

Sarah Webster, Executive Director of Place in Berkshire West, NHS BOB Integrated Care Board ICB said

Here at BOB ICB our commissioned services support many people directly with their mental health wellbeing, but we also know that early intervention, often from within their own community, and even from their peers, is a vitally important step.

There are many fantastic local charities that work hard with their communities to support vulnerable people with these challenges. Our voluntary sector partners are the key to providing invaluable support to our children, young people and their families at the earliest opportunity. Building our local community resilience is the right way to effectively address the inequalities and challenges we know many of our young people experience in getting the right help at the right time.

We are delighted to support them in this work with much-needed funds and look forward to seeing their plans become a reality. It will make a real different to people’s lives.