Mace bid to raise £200,000 for Mind's Blue Light programme

The Mace Foundation has begun a £200,000 fundraising drive in support of mental health charity Mind’s efforts to support the mental well-being of emergency service workers across England and Wales. The consulting firm itself donated £100,000 to its charity-arm’s appeal, meaning 50% of the total target set for Mind has already been reached.

Mind is one of the foremost mental health charities in England and Wales. The organisation aims to improve the situation for those suffering with mental health issues by offering a range of support mechanisms, along with campaigning to change wider society. This ranges from tackling outdated stigmas and attitudes, to combating implicit discrimination from businesses. Forms of mental illness continue to affect around 25% of the UK’s population in a given year, while the number of drugs prescriptions to combat depression continues to skyrocket – climbing 46% from 2012 to 57 million last year.

While a quarter of the population continues to be directly affected by mental illnesses however, certain segments of society tend to be more prone. One such segment are emergency services workers, including staff and volunteers. A study of the emergency services sector by Mind found that 71% of such workers feel their organisation does not encourage them to talk about mental health.

This group, which often find themselves in emotionally charged situations from the scenes of crimes to accidents, as well as the wider stress of being responsible for the lives of others, tend to suffer more from such ailments, while employees find themselves under resourced due to long-standing governmental cuts to those same services. The now notorious case of the Grenfell Tower fire in London, for example, saw firefighters bear witness to an assortment of traumas, including one who recounted finding 41 bodies in one room, shortly before the government voted to maintain a freeze on the pay of emergency service employees in late June.

To support the strained segment of workers, Mind has launched the Blue Light Programme, which is specifically aimed at helping emergency services staff and volunteers deal with their mental health related issues. The organisation offers various means of support, from a direct lines of communication to organisational champions that raise mental health awareness in organisations.

In support of Mind’s efforts, engineering and consulting firm Mace recently announced that its charitable arm, the Mace Foundation, would launched a campaign to raise £200,000 for the Blue Light Programme. The firm, who recently announced Mind as long term charity partners alongside The Construction Youth Trust, LandAid, and the Youth Hostel Association, has kicked off the funding drive by donating £100,000 to the appeal. The remaining funds for the campaign will be sourced from various businesses in the wider construction industry and through its own employees, by direct donations and sponsorship activities.

Commenting on the fund-raising drive, Mike Hanson, Chief Executive of the Mace Foundation said, “The money raised from this appeal with provide our emergency services with the crucial support they need. We all owe them a debt of gratitude for their extraordinary service over the last number of weeks. I encourage everybody in our industry and beyond to support this very worthy cause so that we can help as many heroes as possible.”

Earlier in the year meanwhile, Mace employees raised over £13,000 for the charity Alzheimers Research UK, with the Mace Foundation contributing a £25,000 after the firm’s successful “Go Orange Day”, which aimed to raise awareness about dementia, as well as funding for developing future treatments.