The fight for survival after funding cuts
CoolTan Arts, an arts and mental health charity, lost all their NHS core funding earlier this year. Suzie Ragab explains the impact this has had, and how they are trying to overcome the challenge ahead.
I'm sure I don’t need to tell you about the effects of the cuts on services. Like many others, CoolTan Arts lost its core NHS funding from 1st April 2011 and we have been left unable to fund services as a consequence.
We currently work with 150 people on a weekly basis, providing high quality professional creative arts workshops for adults experiencing mental distress. Our activities span visual, textile, digital, video and poetry and include public art projects which help break down the stigma of mental distress. We also offer gallery/performance space which gives other local community projects somewhere to exhibit and share their work.
After the loss of our core funding, we were assured people who attend CoolTan Arts would be transferred onto a personal budget if eligible. Seven months on, not a single person has a personal budget. CoolTan Arts is doing all it can to continue our popular workshops and activities but this is proving extremely difficuly without extra support.
Without our NHS funding being replaced and without personalisation, we cannot deliver services to eligible people. Even worse, people’s human rights are put at risk and their experience of choice and control is being denied as their budgets were not in place before the cuts were made.
As if this is not enough, the human cost has meant people are returning to hospital and requiring expensive care - amounting up to £3,000-£6,500 per person per week as private beds are sought to cover this increased need. Had people’s budgets already been in place this could have been a preventable expense of taxpayer’s money.
In an effort to combat this challenge we are staging our biggest fundraising event yet: the CoolTan Arts BIG Largactyl Shuffle on 15 October 2011 with celebrity comedian Arthur Smith. This year‘s theme is ‘No Health without Mental Health, a sponsored walk involving everyone who wants to celebrate mental health and help us raise money to cover the cuts.
Going from the Maudsley Hospital to the Tate Modern, it’s a fun, guided, cultural walk with poetry readings and other surprises along the route. This year there will also be a special tree planting ceremony on Camberwell Green as part of a Southwark Council Sculpture commission.
Find out more about the walk and how people can get involved and sponsor us, visit the CoolTan Arts website at www.cooltanarts.org.uk.
