Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment his Department has made of the potential merits of supporting grassroots initiatives to improve mental health in local communities.

The Government is supportive of grassroots initiatives to improve the mental health of local communities.

The Department is providing £5.23 million in grant funding to Mind to administer the Coronavirus Mental Health Response Fund, which is helping local and national voluntary and community sector organisations support people who are experiencing mental ill-health.

As part of this work, the National Survivor User Network is administering a smaller fund to support community and user-led groups and organisations which might not otherwise be eligible for a grant. Grants of up to £2,000 were made available to support community action, peer support, mutual aid and other activities.

We are also providing £12.5 million of funding between 2016/17–2020/21 to the Time to Change mental health anti-stigma campaign which empowers people with lived experience of mental health to work with schools and employers to implement local grassroots mental health anti-stigma campaigns.