6 Everton in the Community schemes face chop after Tory cuts

Six Everton in the Community schemes face the chop because of Conservative cuts to NHS budgets, the ECHO can reveal.

The Blues charity runs sports sessions for several hundred people with mental health issues, including many children.

But health chiefs at the Mersey Care NHS trust admitted they were pulling the plug on the schemes’ funding from April.

Mersey Care and Blues charity bosses said they were looking for new cash elsewhere, but efforts have so far been unsuccessful.

It comes on the same day the Blues charity was formally nominated for a Freedom of the City of Liverpool honour for its three decades of wide-ranging work.

The mental health programmes at risk include their Imagine Your Goals football sessions, Girls on Side fitness sessions and Healthy Blues sports for over-40s.

Pre-employment training courses, as well as gym and therapy sessions for inpatients at Clock View and Mossley Hill hospitals, are also likely to be axed.

Phil Duffy, executive director of Everton in the Community, said: “Naturally we are disappointed Mersey Care are no longer in a position to continue funding our six mental health programmes.

“Each programme is unique and provides an essential support system to our participants. We will continue our dialogue with Mersey Care and our clinical managers, putting the needs of our service users first.

“I’d like to reassure all the participants engaged in our mental health programmes that their sessions will be continuing as normal until the end of March 2018 and we continue to work hard to find a funding solution that keeps these much relied upon, and much needed, programmes in operation beyond April.”

A Mersey Care spokesman said: “Like many NHS organisations we have to prioritise frontline services and maximise opportunities for quality treatment and care within limited resources.

“Mersey Care has funded and helped develop mental health programmes run by Everton in the Community for many years, but regrettably, as of April 2018 we are no longer in a position to continue funding.

“We have been working closely with Everton in the Community to see if other possible sources of funding are available, but so far this has been unsuccessful. We will continue to work with Everton in the Community to pursue options to support service users.”
He also pledged to work closely with participants in the schemes, and help them deal with the shakeup.

The cuts are the latest in a series of NHS funding cuts to hit Merseyside, with charities warning residents’ mental wellbeing was “under attack”.

Liverpool’s Young People’s Advisory Service has seen its funding almost halved, despite providing a lifeline for 2,000 children with mental health problems last year through therapy sessions.

The Liverpool Mental Health Consortium also saw its funding plummet after what one city NHS chief called “cuts by stealth” under the Conservatives.