Increasing access to culturally sensitive mental health and wellbeing support

Key information

• Partner: Partisan
• Amount: £350,000
• Duration: 3 years (2023- 2026)
• Programme: Children’s Mental Health

What we’re doing together

Partisan is a small, Black-led Community Interest Company, born out of a need from the community for accessible and culturally sensitive mental health and wellbeing support. It is run by a diverse, culturally sensitive, forward-thinking team of experienced Psychotherapists and Clinical Psychologists.

This grant builds on an initial development grant, supporting Partisan’s organisational development with a focus on refining their business model and implementing their new strategy.

Partisan’s strength is meeting communities where they are, listening to their needs before supporting them to innovate and adapt the way that mental health services are delivered in local areas. They work closely with Black and minoritised low-income families who tend to experience high levels of structural racism in the health system. Ultimately, through resourcing Partisan we think that more families and children in Lambeth and Southwark will have access to appropriate, accessible, and safe mental health support.

Aims of the partnership

As a core grant, this funding will support Partisan’s organisational development over the next 3 years. It will help Partisan to refine their business model, implement their new strategy, and develop their fundraising and income generation functions.

This will allow Partisan to focus on delivering and strengthening key elements of their service offer, which include:

• Community therapy – partnering with existing services, professionals, and key members of communities to offer highly flexible therapy outside of clinics.
• Clinical supervision for mental health frontline workers and the facilitation of reflective spaces for teams—many of which are left holding the mental health needs of the community. Without this service, these mental health professionals would be left without essential support and guidance.
• Co-production and re-design of sustainable trauma-informed spaces and interventions with existing services, professionals, community leaders, children, young people, and families.
• Dissemination of learning (through workshops, conferences, webinars, and feeding into national policy).

The primary goal of this investment is to have an impact on Partisan’s organisational resilience, which in turn will enable them to positively impact communities.

Connection to our strategy

This investment is a response to our learning from families and community partners that traditional mental health services are not accessible for, or trusted by, the most marginalised families. We know that children living in poverty experience stigma, blame, and the individualisation of the problem, rather than a recognition of the impact that social determinants have on their mental health and wellbeing. This project also builds on other key learning from our Children’s Mental Health programme—that who provides the support is as important as the types of support that are provided.

Providing Partisan with core funding allows them to focus on developing a different model for what mental health and wellbeing support can look like. They will do this by championing the expertise of local community leaders and families, who can shape support systems and embed longer term systemic change.