Teesside mental health charities calling on Government for extra funding
They say demand is very high
We are hearing how mental health charities in Teesside are doing 'huge amounts of work with not a lot of money'.
Many are calling on the Government to give them extra funding as they say demand is very high and 'growing month on month'.
Leigh Trimble is the Chief Executive of Red Balloons, which offers mental health support across Teesside, and she said: "We're doing very, very good work on the ground and we're having a positive impact. In lots of cases we're actually saving people's lives and that's not just us saying that, we get that feedback from people all of the time, so resources-wise there's never enough. We could do so much more if we had more resources.
"When you're dealing with a small charity what you find is that we're very good at doing a lot with not an awful lot of funding. I always say that we at Red Balloons, along with lots of other little charities around the area and around the UK, are doing a lot of great work with a lot of people on not very much funding.
"Demand is very high. Our services are led by volunteers and we have a very small staff team. We cover the whole of the Tees Valley and we see demand going up all of the time month-on-month.
"If we felt at any point that we were struggling to keep up to date or that we couldn't help people, we'd be able to work with other charities and refer people over to them."