Spotlight on Sandwell African Caribbean Mental Health Foundation

Tell us what you do
We provide a range of mental health services for people from predominately African Caribbean backgrounds and their families and careers in the Sandwell and West Birmingham area.

What is your proudest achievement?
It is probably the range of client outcomes that the service users achieve with some support from us. We are a small organisation with a small staff base but we manage to support many people to move on, recover and eventually no longer need to use our services.
What is your experience of support received from SCVO (if relevant)?

It’s been great. Sporadic in nature but we’ve had more support in the last few years. SCVO always do what they say deliver what they say they will.  In the past we have had help with funding bids as well as strategic support when the organisation was threatened with being decommissioned.

What is the most valuable lesson you have learnt about working with people in Sandwell?
Working with our beneficiaries has taught us to never judge a book my its cover. Never underestimate people as their potential will surprise you.

What are your plans for the future and some of the challenges you face?
The challenges we face impact our plans for the future. We want to tighten up our infrastructure and try to address the imbalance between money from grants and generated income. This has been improving over the last 12 months and we want to see this continue so that our organisation becomes more sustainable and strong.
In August we set up a user led service called Ujima which was initially a quite challenging.  Now though the beneficiaries have taken on roles and responsibilities to help each other so what was a challenge is now a source of support for our organisation moving forwards.

How can SCVO help to support your organisation in the future?
What SCVO offers in terms of support and how they deliver it fits nicely with our needs already. We look through the newsletter to keep up to date with what is happening in the sector and the funding digest is really helpful too.  Just keep providing the range of services that are currently available.

For more information you can visit their website at www.sacmhf.co.uk or ring 0121 525 1629