Volunteer project closed through lack of funding

5th August 2010

Power House 2000 - a volunteer project set up to help people with mental health conditions get back into work, teaching them carpentry and DIY skills - has been closed because of a lack of funding.

Based in Tooting, the organisation had been promoting the economic inclusion of people since 1991 and was paid £39 a day to take referrals from a nearby hospital but has now shut its doors, Your Local Guardian reports.

Numbers fell from around 12 people a year making use of the facility to four in 2010, with the final person leaving last week.

Organiser Brian Adams, 54, put the development down to public sector cuts, saying that mental health services are always the first to be dissolved.

"I have been told unofficially that we were classed as a luxury and they couldn't afford it," he remarked.

This comes after Dr Rachel Perkins of South West London and St George's Mental Health Trust - gold members of EFD - said that people with mental health conditions need to be enabled to work so that perceptions and viewpoints can be changed.

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