Our Town is new funding to empower South Australian towns to tackle their specific mental health challenges.
The Fay Fuller Foundation will enter into partnerships of up to a decade with SA rural and regional towns. These partnerships will explore and work towards solutions to mental health challenges identified by the towns themselves
The actual amount of funding will depend on what the towns decide to do, however, the final two towns could receive several million dollars each in funding over the 10 years. This funding differs from other approaches as it is not bound by an election cycle and the individual towns involved will identify the mental health challenges they wish to address. We are also not flying in with our own solutions as we want towns to tell us what mental health means for them and the changes they want to see.
Our Town funding is not to simply replace or expand services but it’s about building the capability within communities – or skills, processes and structures – to enable them to work towards long-term and sustainable change.
The idea for Our Town came from a research report we commissioned which showed how major the issue of mental health is in regional SA. We have chosen smaller rural and regional towns as we felt that they may not have the resources or influence to attract the funding required to make significant change.
For more information visit: https://www.fayfullerfoundation.com.au/our-funding-grants/our-town/
Applications close: 5 August, 2019.