We are pleased to announce the projects and groups that have been awarded funding through the Mind the Gap fund.
At Islington Giving, we are committed to improving mental health for everyone and connect people who are isolated. Through consultation with community partners, we know that some people who are at risk of homelessness and experiencing co-existing disadvantages, could benefit from mental health support but find there are a lack of services that are accessible to them. This is where ‘Mind the Gap’ comes in. The fund refers to the gap between support systems that people facing multiple challenges often find themselves in, adversely impacting their potential for recovery.
Through either advocacy or intervention, each funded project will support people in the borough experiencing co-existing and multiple disadvantages, and below is a summary of how each project will use the funding.
Intervention:
Hoarding UK: A ‘Healthy Homes’ pilot, which will include providing counselling and practical support for individuals with Hoarding Behaviour (HB), and intensive person-centred support to 20 Islington residents.
Single Homeless Project: supports single Londoners by preventing homelessness, providing support and accommodation, promoting wellbeing, enhancing opportunity, and being a voice for change. The funding will contribute to one-to-one psychotherapy sessions and group therapy sessions to people experiencing multiple disadvantages across Islington within SHP’s accommodation services and in- community.
KMEWO (Kurdish Middle Eastern Women’s Organisation): The funding will contribute towards increasing the project’s capacity, provide an additional 32 Islington women with 12-14 Mother-Tongue Counselling Sessions, and reduce barriers to access often faced by this group due to language and cultural barriers to accessing psychological interventions, in addition to those who have No Recourse to Public Funds.
Street Talk: provides counselling to women who would be excluded from other services as a result of their complex needs, because they have no recourse to public funds, are rough sleeping, are not registered with a doctor or are living in hiding or fear. The funding will support one to one counselling sessions for women involved in exploitative prostitution, who are likely to have a range of other complex needs.
Brandon Centre: provides community-based adolescent (aged 12-25) psychotherapy, enabling access to specialist young person-centred therapeutic help that is unlikely to be accessed elsewhere. The funding will contribute towards providing one day per week counselling provision for up to 150 young people (over 18) who are homeless/at risk of homelessness; strengthen links and in-house counselling provision and enable hostels to fund social activities that will complement the new counselling offer.
Advocacy:
The Manna: The Manna already operates a drop in day centre for people experiencing homelessness and / or those who are marginalised. Our funding will help part-fund a pilot project with Islington GP Federation who, together with Manna, have identified that homeless and precariously housed people are not accessing mainstream health services, particularly services concerned with mental health.
Islington Mind: An Enablement Housing model providing targeted housing support to adults in Islington who live with co-existing disadvantages. Enablement Housing will run one day a week provide service users with 8 weekly one-to-one sessions over 8-10 weeks and provide approximately four sessions per week.
Street Storage: provides mental health advocacy to the people who are storing their belongings with street storage. This project will run from a newly acquired building in Islington, which offers greater capacity to accommodate the possessions for 500 people.
Stonewall Housing: The funding from Islington Giving will contribute one third of the costs of a specialist Mental Health advocate over 2 years to support homeless individuals in Islington who identify as LGBTQIA+.
