Shadow home secretary says Medway needs to get it's future back

Yvette Cooper visited the Men in Sheds project in Gillingham which helps locals with their mental health and loneliness.

Transcript

00:00 A space for men to come together and talk about their mental health. They're learning

00:06 new skills in wood making and they come from all walks of life. But today it was the turn

00:12 of the Shadow Home Secretary. She was visiting men in sheds to find out the importance of

00:18 this community project.

00:23 But it's the filling of holes in this community that this project is concerned about. They

00:28 are wholly funded by Medway Council and want to ensure their money continues to come through

00:33 to support community cohesion projects like theirs.

00:36 I think it's really important to have the prevention work in the community and this

00:41 is the kind of thing that can prevent people getting into all sorts of problems later on

00:47 and also prevent the kinds of crises that end up having huge pressures and costs on

00:52 our public services later on and at a time when it really does feel like our public services

00:57 are broken, that local services are being undermined. This is about communities coming

01:03 together to prevent things going wrong as part of a long term plan for the future.

01:08 Wood's been shaved away here for 10 years now and their numbers in that time have continued

01:12 to grow. And they've said they've been able to turn lives around of people with poor mental

01:17 health without them having to go through the NHS.

01:20 She's seen what's happened here, she's seen what can happen and the direction we're going.

01:26 So if you pull the money away from that, then you wind up with people in crisis and that's

01:36 going to cost money.

01:37 Being part of the Sunlight Centre in Gillingham, this project could also make referrals for

01:41 the most vulnerable. And now with the cost of living crisis, they say they've never been

01:45 so important.

01:46 Yes, so we're in an area of deprivation. I think it's the third greatest deprivation

01:51 in Kent and Medway. So people around us haven't got big pockets so we need to support them

01:58 with free teas, coffees, reduced food, Christmas dinners and things like that.

02:04 Medway Council has no intention of pulling funding from this project but volunteers here

02:08 hope other communities can continue to receive support from local authorities across the

02:14 region.

02:15 Gabriel Morris, in Gillingham.