Breaking News

So... the news we’d been dreading at work has finally arrived. Our last remaining hope has been extinguished and the funding we needed hasn’t come through.

Liverpool Mental Health Consortium will close down at the end of next month after 24 years as the city’s independent, user-led, fulcrum for all things mental health related.

It’s incredibly frustrating, disappointing, upsetting and exasperating at a time when mental distress is on the rise and services are struggling to cope with the numbers of people needing their support.

The outpouring of love we’ve received on social media has brought several tears to my eyes today and just underlines how infuriating it is that, despite our best efforts, funder after funder hasn’t grasped why what we do has meant so much to so many people.

We’ll have our final event this Friday and will then spend April tying up any loose ends, and going through the administrative and legal procedures involved in winding the organisation up.

Meanwhile, I took to the airwaves today with my predecessor, Andy, and our co-chair, Pete, to discuss the end of an era with Mick Coyle on ‘Mental Health Monday’ on Radio City Talk.

The whole thing is preserved for posterity on this podcast https://audioboom.com/posts/7211930-episode-107-liverpool-mental-health-consortium

Today’s tune has to be ‘Everything is Awful’ by The Decemberists https://youtube.com/watch?v=gApzlNJBjtM