Fit 4 Life

We want mental health and wellbeing support to be available and accessible to all young people and their families in our community. Traditional mental health and wellbeing services meet the needs of some but are often not flexible enough to meet the specific and complex needs of those who are the most marginalised, stigmatised and excluded in our society. As a result, young people often don’t engage with traditional mental health services. In the wake of the pandemic and the ongoing cost of living crisis. we have seen a large increase in the number of young people using our services. Many families are struggling to cope and have told us that this is a particularly hard time for them. Consequently, we are seeing an increasing demand for our mental health and wellbeing programmes. Young people turn to us because our consistent approach to working with the community provides them with a sense of stability in increasingly uncertain times. As our existing cohort learn that they can really trust us to be there for them, they recommend us to more of their peers and the demand for our programmes increases exponentially. We would therefore like to apply for £50,000 to further extend the Community and School strands of our existing Fit4Life work and increase the hours of our Mental Health and Wellbeing Officer in order to do so. The work will include:

·      Tulse Hill Estate Wellbeing sessions: Young people aged 16-25 get the chance to talk in confidence about any issues they like with trained counsellors and SMP staff. The majority of attendees are current or former gang members.

·      Cage Football on Tulse Hill Estate for 13 – 16 year olds: twice weekly football sessions with a free after-school meal targeted at those who have been identified as being a cause for concern and at risk of involvement in gangs. The cage is situated just 50 metres from where a young man, a former SMP participant, was murdered. We want to try and get people to feel safer on their estate and also develop a greater sense of community.

·      Fit 4 Life Programme at City Heights School: An activity-based wellbeing group for Year 9 students, designed to develop life skills to bring about positive changes.

Additionally, we have noticed a marked upturn in the number of young people in the 5-7 age range presenting to us with a range of neurodivergent issues. We propose to use our Saturday Club to support them and their families. Our coaches will work with the group to promote structured learning through football. We will use football as a tool to support the development of gross motor skills, co-ordination and focus, ensuring children are learning physical literacy whilst having fun. Our coaches are trained to offer support for emotional regulation. For those children who become dysregulated during sessions, we will set up a separate pitch as a calming low-pressure environment. This helps them to manage their emotions and enables us to gradually reintegrate them into group activities.  

he St Matthew’s Project provides a safe and encouraging place where young people aged 3 – 25 can come together and take part in fun, challenging and high-quality sport and educational programmes. Most of our participants live in the Brixton Rush Common and Brixton Windrush wards of Lambeth which are within the top 10% Deprivation Deciles nationally for crime and living environment. 95% of our participants are from a BAME background. 68% are entitled to free school meals. As well as complex deprivation issues, the young people we work with also face health-related difficulties, including obesity, and a high prevalence of risk factors for mental health problems. Lambeth is amongst the top ten most dangerous boroughs in London. Crime levels, and in particular gang-related activity, are high in our target area. Brixton Windrush has the highest crime rate out of Lambeth's local and nearby wards and is the ward with the highest rate of drugs and possession of weapons offences. Ten young men known to us have been murdered since 2011. All our activities are free, which is very important as the vast majority of the young people we work with cannot otherwise afford to make use of the limited sporting facilities available within the local area.