Addressing Mental Health Inequalities in Minority Ethnic Groups Grants 2026
23 September 2026
We’ve awarded £50,000 through the latest round of Addressing Mental Health Inequalities in Minority Ethnic Groups Grants, our partnership with Synergi-Leeds*.
This round of funding aims to address a specific issue: the rate of Black men being detained under the Mental Health Act in Leeds. Black men in the UK continue to be overrepresented at every stage of detention – from police custody and mental health sectioning to immigration holding and prison custody. Through this programme, we’re funding Black-led organisations in Leeds to work within their local community and alongside statutory services to change this.
We’ve funded 6 organisations through this programme:
- Ol’ Man Swanny
Some of their funded activities include:
- Community outreach and culturally responsive mental health interventions, including community-led engagement sessions, safe spaces for Black men to discuss mental health, peer support groups, culturally tailored workshops and awareness campaigns to reduce stigma.
- Holistic, person-centred support that looks beyond clinical needs, addressing wellbeing, identity, social connection and life circumstances, delivered through both group and structured 1:1 sessions.
- Exploring the themes of aspiration, grounding and identity through a photography project, alongside workshops covering expressing emotions, mental health strategies and building support networks through friends and community.
This targeted round of funding follows a multi-year grants programme that supported nearly 2,000 local people from minority ethnic backgrounds with their mental health. 12 organisations used £300,000 of funding to build capacity, reduce stigma, increase trust and support early interventions for mental health needs.
*Synergi-Leeds is an award-winning innovative and ambitious citywide approach to tackling ethnic inequalities in mental health. The Partnership’s growing network of statutory and voluntary sector organisations is instrumental in supporting Priority 2 of the Leeds All-Age Mental Health Strategy, ‘reducing the over representation of people from Black, Asian and minority ethnic communities admitted in crisis’. The network adopts a whole system, life course approach and uses ‘Creative Spaces events’ to centre the voices of people with lived experience.