Coronavirus Mental Health Response Fund – applications open

Organisation
Reading Voluntary Action (RVA)
Primary interest
Voluntary sector

Voluntary and community sector (VCS) organisations have a vital role working alongside NHS colleagues to support anyone who has a mental health problem. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, demand for mental health services is increasing. To help VCS organisations based in England continue to provide mental health services – or provide additional support – organisations can apply for a Coronavirus Mental Health Response Fund (CMHRF) grant. This new grant funding is focused on supporting VCS mental health providers to respond to an anticipated increase in need as a direct result of the coronavirus pandemic. The funding is available for registered charities to either:

  • Scale up existing activity – for example, your organisation may manage a helpline or a forum that is experiencing an unprecedented amount of requests.
  • Adapt existing activity – for example, you may have traditionally delivered all of your services in-person and now want to adapt them in order to continue meeting the needs of existing, or new, service users.
  • Introduce new activity – you may want to introduce a new service that will meet the specific needs of your service users that arise due, in part, to the coronavirus crisis.

The £5 million governement fund will be administered by Mind and charities will be able to apply for grants of £20,000 or £50,000 for projects lasting up to 12 months.

How to apply
  • You must be a registered charity (see below for funding for smaller groups).
  • Applicants are invited to apply at any time.
  • It’s a fast track assessment process, so applications will be assessed every two weeks and applicants will be informed of the outcome within a month of applying.
  • Applications should take no longer than 60 minutes to complete.
  • The fund will remain open for mental health voluntary sector organisations for as long as funds remain.
Further information
Support for smaller organisations and groups

As part of this funding programme, the National Survivor User Network (NSUN) will be administering a fund to support user-led organisations and smaller, unconstituted community organisations, who might not otherwise be eligible for a grant. Details will be available from Monday 20 April on the NSUN website. RVA will keep you posted with updates on this funding.