Funding boost for south London mental health organisations
Maudsley Charity extends unrestricted funding for 21 voluntary and community sector organisations
Maudsley Charity, through its Living Well with Psychosis Community Support fund, has today announced grants to 21 organisations providing much-needed support to people living with severe mental illness in south London – specifically in the boroughs of Southwark, Lambeth, Lewisham and Croydon.
These trusted and established organisations provide physical activities, counselling, creative therapy, peer support, employment, and welfare advice and much more. These non-clinical forms of support are key to the future of local and neighbourhood-based care.
Most of the organisations also have specific experience and competence in working with people from racially minoritised communities, who are disproportionately affected by mental illness and often have less positive experiences of services.
The organisations have been awarded unrestricted grants of between £72,000 and £90,000 which they are free to use to fund core services, including paying salaries, funding operations or sustaining existing projects over the next 3 years. This grant represents an extension of funding for the organisations. All successfully applied in May 2025 for a year’s worth of initial funding of up to £30,000.
We’re really pleased to continue our support to these 21 organisations who are doing so much to help people stay well and out of hospital and to live fulfilling lives. It was important to the charity that we provide them with unrestricted funding, something we know is increasingly scarce in the current funding landscape. These organisations do invaluable work often with very little resource and we feel that they are the best judges of how the money should be spent.
Alongside the funding, organisations can access additional support from the programme’s learning and support partner, JRNY Consulting, which is providing bespoke capacity building opportunities to help the organisations become more sustainable.
Bringing lived experience to decision making
This trust in the organisations is rooted in the charity’s commitments to being an Open and Trusting funder, an initiative of the Institute for Voluntary Action. It meant that the funding application was simplified, relevant, and accessible, and that organisations were given the flexibility to make changes to how the funding was being used.
In its original funding call last year, the charity also sought to include the voices of local people with lived experience, including carers and family members. The charity worked with Croydon BME Forum to select and support a cohort of Lived Experience Assessors who joined members of the charity team on site visits, conducted interviews with shortlisted organisations, and collaborated on the final decisions during the original funding phase. They also worked with the charity to review funding submissions and conduct interviews for continuation funding. Their invaluable insights helped ensure that the selected organisations were effectively serving the needs of people living with serious mental illness.
Feedback on that process was largely positive, both from the awarded organisations and the Lived Experience Assessors.
I felt like I was part of something genuinely new and equitable. I was not just consulted, I was leading the assessment. Using my inside understanding to ask the right questions. We were told to use our own creativity to ask our own questions and interpret them in any way. I was empowered. This experience gave me a sense of purpose, turning this into a positive change for my community. It was an amazing experience.
List of awarded organisations
Learn more about the support they provide
- 999 Club
- Centre of Change: Counselling, Mentoring and Tutoring Service
- Creative Voices Collective
- Diamond Ecoute
- Hear Us
- Intoart
- Katakata CIC
- Key Changes Positive Mental Health Through Music
- LOVO (Ladies of Virtue Outreach CIC)
- Manju Shahul Hammed Foundation
- Mental Fight Club
- Mosaic Clubhouse
- Poetic Unity
- Psychosis Therapy Project – (PTP Usemi)
- Raw Material Music & Media Education Limited
- Sporting Recovery CIC
- Status Employment
- Sydenham Garden
- Therapeutic Productions CIC
- The Manna Society
- The Motherhood Group