Tens of thousands of people experiencing suicidal thoughts or approaching a mental health crisis will receive vital support, as the government launches a £10 million fund so charities can work with the NHS to provide life-saving suicide prevention services.
Charities in communities across England can now apply for the latest round of funding from the Suicide Prevention Grant Fund which will ensure as many people as possible can access the support and prevention services they need, when they need it. Funding will also help prevent people reaching crisis point and reduce future demand for these services across both the charity sector and the NHS.
A previous fund of £5.4 million in 2021 to 2022 supported over 100 organisations within the voluntary, community and social enterprise (VCSE) sector. The results of the fund were overwhelmingly positive, with virtually every single successful bidder saying it helped meet increased demand after the pandemic, improved access to services for people in need and helped identify those experiencing suicidal thoughts quicker.
Richard Fuller MP said:
I welcome the news that the government has launched a new £10 million Suicide Prevention Grant Fund to support voluntary, community and social enterprise organisations to deliver suicide prevention activity across England.
There are a number of organisations delivering vital services to prevent suicides and this funding will help these organisations to manage increasing demand for services and deliver innovative activity to save lives.
Applications are now open until October 1st.
The funding comes alongside a projected £13.6 billion investment by the NHS this year to continue to provide, expand and transform mental health services in England including NHS talking therapies, children and young people’s mental health services and eating disorder services.
Suicide is sadly the biggest cause of death in both men and women under the age of 35 in the UK, and there has been a noticeable increase in the last decade in the number of tragic suicides among women under the age of 25. NHS crisis lines receive 200,000 calls per month and Samaritans reports receiving over 10,000 calls per day on average.
This latest round of government funding, however, could be used by the VCSE sector to boost capacity in crisis helplines - both for those struggling and for those who are concerned about a loved one - provide signposting to services, launch campaigns targeted at specific at-risk groups like young men, and also support families who have experienced the tragedy of losing a loved one by suicide.
While this funding will help fund a range of preventative and innovative activity up and down the country, the government is committed to doing all it can to prevent deaths by suicide. Later this year, it will publish a new national suicide prevention strategy that will set out further actions and commitments to deliver this.
The government is investing at least £2.3 billion of additional funding a year by March 2024 to expand and transform NHS mental health services, so an extra 2 million people can get the mental health support they need. Over £400 million is also going into improving mental health facilities, including by giving patients the privacy of their own bedroom and eradicating shared dorms. The mental health workforce is also growing. In December 2022, we saw almost 9,000 more mental health staff working than the previous year. The NHS Long Term Workforce Plan sets out ambitions to grow the mental health workforce further.
