Charity can only survive a matter of months without core grant

More than 300 clients face losing mental health support after the Scottish Government pulled funding from a vital East Kilbride-based charity.

Talk Now supports people with a range of mental health issues including counselling survivors of sexual abuse cases.

However Pat Mair, the charity’s founder and director, has been told a grant worth around £100,000 a year, won’t be renewed, meaning it faces imminent closure.

The charity, which receives around six referals a day, has been left in limbo and has had to put all referals on hold.

Mair explained: “We only have two paid staff on the books, myself and the office manager, and for the last four years the grant has paid for both our salaries and, crucially, our premises.

“Our income is small – around £240,000 – made up from a variety of funders but without this cash we simply can’t afford to operate.”

The organisation has been in operation since 2012 but quickly became over-subscribed with clients.

It led to Mair seeking funding and premises and in a short number of years realised demand outstripped supply.

When Covid struck it worked non-stop to meet extra demand with multiple organisations, including the NHS, using Talk Now to help meet that demand.

However with increasingly more referrals being made for mental health counselling, Talk Now has found itself a victim of its own success, operating a waiting list of 150 clients.

It has expanded through demand to cover the entire Greater Glasgow area as well as Paisley and Ayr.

The news comes just as new figures show death by suicide increased over the last year in Scotland.

There were 792 probable suicide deaths in 2023, an increase of 30 on the previous year, according to figures published by National Records of Scotland.  

Mair (pic above) said she has grave fears for those currently being supported by the charity if the funding axe falls.

“Many of our service users see us as a lifeline,” she said. “We support sexual abuse survivors, people who have suicidal thoughts and those who have no one else in their lives.

“For others we’re just there to help them through their week because they struggle with everyday pressures.

“The majority of these clients won’t be able to get support elsewhere because services are currently vastly over-subscribed. Both the NHS and charities working in mental health all have waiting lists months, sometimes years, long.

“It’s a desperate situation.”

Inspiring Scotland administers and supports the Scottish Government’s Survivor of Childhood Abuse Support (SOACS) fund, the funding stream that awards Talk Now its grant.

In its rejection letter to the organisation, the fund said it received 47 applications requesting a total of almost £7.7 million on a budget of £3.345 million. Therefore “the decision-making panel has prioritised funding those applications which best meet the fund aim that survivors enjoy a safe and healthy life across Scotland.”

A spokesperson for Inspiring Scotland told TFN: “There was a high demand for funding from the Scottish Government’s Survivor of Childhood Abuse Support (SOCAS 2024- 26) and the fund was heavily oversubscribed.

“We understand the disappointment and impact of unsuccessful applications and have offered follow up support to those organisations.”

TFN asked the Scottish Government whether the demise and under-funding of services, such as pulling the grant for Talk Now, had a correlation with suicide figures and increased pressure on the NHS’s own psychological services.

In response, mental wellbeing minister Maree Todd told TFN new approaches to support were being implemented. 

“The Survivors of Childhood Abuse Support (SOCAS) fund was vastly oversubscribed,” she said.

“An independent decision-making panel selected a portfolio of successful organisations which represented the needs of adult survivors of childhood abuse in Scotland.

“We understand the disappointment and impact of unsuccessful applications and fund managers Inspiring Scotland have offered follow up support to those organisations. 

“We are launching an online portal to ensure people feeling suicidal know where to go for help. The introduction of suicide reviews this year will also help us spot missed opportunities to support people and importantly use that learning to redesign services.”