Chester FC Community Trust has been awarded a National Lottery Awards For All grant to extend its award-winning mental health football project.
 

 
The charity will use the grant of £9,555 to develop new football sessions to engage with and improve the lives of men, at risk of, or experiencing mental health problems.
 
Chester FC Reach Your Goal aims to increase physical activity levels, to raise self-esteem and confidence, to develop coping strategies and build resilience to achieve positive changes to participants’ lives and enable them to fulfill their potential.
 
The project will combine free weekly football sessions with mental fitness and lifestyle coaching, exploring a range of topics and featuring guest speakers who will share their own experiences, and offer participants access to additional support to address identified issues including depression, anxiety, drug or alcohol dependency, homelessness and unemployment.
 
There will be pathways to represent Chester FC in the Cheshire Ability Counts Football League along with opportunities to complete FA coaching qualifications and volunteer with the Community Trust.
 
Jim Green, chief executive of Chester FC Community Trust, said: “This is fantastic news and will allow us to build on the success of our existing work around mental health.
 
“We have been running weekly sessions in partnership with forfutures at the Northgate Arena for some time and these have been a great success, however the sessions are now at capacity with an established group of participants so it has been a challenge to manage this.
 
“The grant will allow to develop more sessions and engage with more men, giving them the chance to be more active, make new friends, be part of a support network and most importantly know that they are not alone.”
 
Chester FC Community Trust won Best Health Project in the 2018 National League Trust Community Awards and Best Community Project in the Cheshire FA Grassroots Football Awards 2018 for its mental health project.
 
Please email community@chesterfc.com for more information about Chester FC Reach Your Goal.