Health grants for organisations

Organisation

The Maya Centre

Cloudesley grant

2019 – £90,000 (£30,000 per year for three years) from the Principal Grants Fund

2021 – £60,000 (£30,000 per year for two years) extension funding

About the Organisation

The Maya Centre is run by women for women and is based in Islington. It provides free mental health and wellbeing services to women on low incomes who have severe mental health needs stemming from trauma experienced through domestic violence, physical or sexual abuse as well as sexual abuse in childhood, fleeing war and traditional harmful practices such as female genital mutilation and forced marriages. They provide free psychodynamic and person-centred therapy and wrap around services which include complementary therapies, psychoeducation and wellbeing workshops. They prioritise intercultural and intersectional approaches via tailored support offered in 14 community languages and for specific, minoritised cultural groups.

Project Funded

The grant goes towards 1:1 counselling and a therapeutic group to support women to recover from the trauma of gender-based violence, increase resilience and wellbeing, and reduce isolation. As a result of the pandemic, the planned programme of group therapies could not run. However, when groups were allowed, these funds were put towards the Black Women’s Psychotherapy and Psychoeducation Groups. As a result, this has grown into a defined Black Women’s Project, offering holistic support from psychoeducation through to individual and group counselling.

Impact of Project

During the second year of the project, 142 women successfully completed a 1:1 course of counselling. Of these women, 86.8% demonstrated a significant improvement in their ability to express their feelings or problems leading to a reduction in stress and anxiety, 63% showed a significant overall mental health improvement, and 68% improved their subjective wellbeing. 80.6% showed improvements in their relationships with others and 60.5% showed improved day to day functioning and self-esteem.

What the group says

“Funding from Cloudesley has enabled the Maya Centre to prioritise a very specialist area of work. Our Black Women’s Project provides a unique safe space in which women from African, Caribbean or Black British backgrounds can explore compounding experiences of trauma, abuse and racism, experiencing in-depth therapeutic and holistic support which prioritise healing, social justice and empowerment.”

The Cloudesley perspective – why did this project gain support?

The project fit well with the Fund’s focus on addressing health inequalities amongst people experiencing multiple disadvantages, as it reaches women who find it difficult to engage with mental health services because of the level of extra support they need. The Maya Centre supports them to access, engage and complete their counselling by providing practical support, including signposting and take up of other appropriate services. Demand for longer-term psychodynamic counselling for vulnerable women in Islington was clear, with other local providers having long waiting lists. The Maya Centre are well linked in locally with good referral networks. They provide therapy in 11 different languages and work to ensure the most vulnerable and disadvantaged can access their services with a minimal wait time.