Mental health ministers urged to support basic income pilots
In May we shared an open letter for Mental Health Awareness Week asking ministers to support the exploration of basic income in the UK. It was co-signed by over 2,500 people. We worked on this with some of the participants of the Peace of Mind project. Today we’ve sent the letter off to ministers in England, Wales and Scotland.
From November last year until February the Basic Income Conversation worked with Basic Income Network Scotland to run the project Peace of Mind. This project looked at the links between money and mental health.
We spoke to people with personal and professional experience of mental health and the social security system to understand these links and how a basic income could support people to look after their mental health. You can find out more about what we learnt during the Peace of Mind project here.
For #MentalHealthAwarenessWeek, 10–16 May 2021, we teamed up with some of the project participants to write this open video letter. Asking ministers and mental health charities to start seriously considering the role of basic income.
Over the next few weeks the open letter gathered over 2,500 thousand signatures from people who want to see basic income explored as a preventative mental health measure.
Today we handed the letter in to ministers, asking them to meet with us to discuss how we could work together on this. We will let you know how that goes!
We included a packet of wildflower seeds in the letters. This represented nature which was the theme of this year’s Mental Health Awareness Week.
It also represented the seeds of basic income that have been planted across the UK. By people like you talking about the idea, by the activists and advocates that drive the growing basic income movement and by everyone who co-signed the open letter.
We have some more of these packets of seeds! We’ll be sending them to people around the UK so they can literally plant the seeds of basic income. They’ll grow flowers that bees and butterflies like as well as sending a powerful message to the ministers we’ve asked to meet with us.
If you would like a packet of seeds head over to our donations page, which explains how to access them. If you can make a donation and support our work we would be very grateful and if you can’t that’s not a problem. You don’t have to make a donation to be sent a packet of seeds, these will be allocated based on who asks first. There are only 100 packets available so get in there now!
Find out how to grab a packet of basic income seeds on our donation page.
The findings of the Peace of Mind project will be presented at the Basic Income Earth Network World Congress in Glasgow in August. This international event is being hosted online; if you want to attend make sure to sign up now.
We want to say a massive thank you to the whole Peace of Mind project team who have driven this work forward and everyone who co-signed the letter. We hope to make even more progress working with the ministers responsible for mental health very soon.
