Partnerships

HELF is a partnership between the following:

• HARP (Health Advocacy Resource Project)
• Manchester Mental Health and Social Care Trust ('The Trust')
• Big Life
• NACRO

A Development Worker for the partnership has been funded for three years by the Big Lottery Well Being Fund & Comic Relief Red Nose Fund.

HELF's AIM

To develop a city wide social enterprise engaging young people and adults with mental health issues, in healthy local food activities, in order to improve skills, confidence and overall health.

Why is HELF needed?

Manchester has high levels of deprivation and mental illness. The HELF partnership will tackle both these problems by making healthy food more accessible and providing valuable training, work based learning and personal development opportunities for mental health service users.

HELF Activities & Venues

Current HELF venues are managed by three of the Trust partners (HARP, the Trust & Big Life). They are made up of community-based cafes located within day centres & hospitals & community gardens & allotments located across the city. Collectively the venues provide a large resource of facilities for growing, producing & cooking healthy food and skills and offer many different learning opportunities for service users and volunteers.

The HELF partnership is aiming to bring all the venues to work jointly together so that they can support each other, for example by using food grown in the gardens & allotments in our cafes & catering projects and equally provide a pathway of learning for our service users & volunteers.

As the partnership develops HELF will increase the food related activities it is involved in to both enhance its financial stability and create further opportunities for service users and volunteers.