MindOut is a mental health service run by and for LGBT people.

Over the last 11 years they have developed a successful, well used, inclusive range of services of which staff, volunteers and service users can be rightly proud of.

Recently Mind in Brighton & Hove, the host organisation have announced plans to change the way in which MindOut's services are delivered and managed.

They intend to split the MindOut team and remove the LGBT specific management.

Mind in Brighton & Hove believe this is necessary to support the future of Mind in Brighton & Hove.

This was done with no consultation with LGBT services users or the wider LGBT community who entrusted the project into the care of Mind in Brighton & Hove eleven years ago.

Mind in Brighton & Hove now says it will listen to objections, but seems committed to change, saying LGBT management is not necessary and more worryingly denying they are taking LGBT funds to support their mainstream services.

In their original bid to the Big Lottery Fund, MindOut received Big Lottery Funding for identified LGBT specific posts.

Any attempts by Mind In Brighton & Hove to use this money to help finance the restructing of Mind in Brighton & Hove will be seem by many within the LGBT community as money being stolen from the LGBT community resources.

Count Me In Too identified the very specific needs for mental health services delivered by LGBT people to LGBT people.

It is not acceptable that the future of a project that is universally recognised as a model of excellence and good practice should be put at risk to serve the interests of Mind in Brighton & Hove rather than the interests of those maginalised people with mental health issues within the LGBT community that MindOut has served faithfully for the last eleven years.

MindOut was created as a response to the poor service LGBT people received from mental health service providers and to change the way LGBT people were being treated at the time.

It now reaches 300 people a year in every part of the community including trans people. It has recently launched BlackOUT for BME people in our community. The work is funded by the local PCT, the Big Lottery Fund, community fundraising events and it has the benefit of a substancial legacy too.

The local Mind organisation, its host organisation is struggling to make itself relevant in a new world of competitive tendering for contracts from statutory mental health commissioners which is why Mind is re organising to meet this challenge.

However, by asking MindOut to give up its identity as a specialist team of workers led by their LGBT manager to help support their new structure is not acceptable.

Mindout's workers will be split up into other teams and integrated into MIND's generic structure. MindOut's managers posts which form the heart of the project, will go altogether.

The loss of the projects' identity and leadership would mean the end of any chance to continue its eleven year history of providing mental health services locally, while leading on LGBT mental health issues nationally.

Raising funds from charitable and lottery funders without a clear identity and a close connection with the LGBT community would be a difficult if not impossible task.

MindOut belongs to the LGBT community in Brighton and Hove who entrusted Mind in Brighton and Hove to serve the best interests of the LGBT community at large when they were originally appointed guardians of the project.

Trust and confidence of service users, some in a fragile mental state, the staff and volunteers at MindOut and people from within the wider LGBT community in the motives of Mind has been severely damaged by the actions of Mind in Brighton & Hove.  

The time has come for there to be a discussion about moving the project to a dedicated LGBT host organisation, to guarantee the integrity of the project for years to come with people who understand the importance of LGBT management in LGBT organisations.

This is a defining moment for the LGBT community in Brighton & Hove.

The national economic picture is not good and many of our LGBT organisations who rely on statutory funding will find the cupboard is bare over the next three years.

We must not stand idly by and watch the future of one of our Blue Ribboned LGBT organisations be put at risk through the actions of straight people at Mind in Brighton and Hove who clearly don't understand the importance of LGBT specific services and more importantly the people that staff them, to LGBT people and the wider LGBT community.

MindOut has secure funding for the next 18 months, this should not be touched as any part of the Mind in Brighton & Hove restructure plans.

Please sign the petition and make your views known to the Trustees at Mind in Brighton & Hove.

Sign the petition at: www.PetitionOnline.com/mindout/petition.html

Fill in the survey at: www.surveymonkey.com/s/FVFY5ZN

Join the Facebook group page called Hands off MindOut