In a message to all members back in April 2025, the QVoMH Steering Group wrote of the need for a non-temporary clerk (or clerks), together with increased capacity to contribute to several key Steering Group roles, which was urgent in order to keep QVoMH going. Now in 2026, and in spite of consistent efforts by the QVoMH Nominations Group and the Steering Group, QVoMH is still without either of these things. We know now that the QVoMH membership does not contain Friends with spare capacity to take on these roles. On the other hand, there have been indications that the membership is keen for Quaker Voices on Mental Health to continue rather than fold.
During 2025 we learned not only that some Friends not in QVoMH membership hope that QVoMH will continue, but that some of those Friends would like to see more of a networked connection developing between everyone working to support mental health, wellbeing and mental illness across BYM. And we became increasingly aware of the rise in mental illness across our society, often in relation to traumas of many sorts, especially among children and young people.
We have expressed the hope that we will be able to pick up after the Pause. But much of what we have been doing to try and recruit more capacity to keep Quaker Voices going and continue to deliver our current programme has clearly not worked; and when you go on doing the same thing that isn’t working, you can expect the same dismal result! Surely it’s time to try something different.
So following the Pause, sometime in 2026, can QVoMH resume in some way? This paper suggests one way, re-defining QVoMH itself as a very different, exciting new project.
In 2025, a series of discussions suggested that QVoMH might play a central supporting role in the Society of Friends by transitioning into Quaker Voices on Mental Health in the widest sense. We were asked: “How can Quaker bodies involved in mental health work more closely together?
The current network of QVoMH members might be expanded, transitioning into a network of all Quaker voices whose work and interests relate to mental health in some way. Developing such an exciting network as a new project would enable this to happen; it would enable the development of a Quaker Voices on Mental Health Network (QVoMHN) linking together the many Quaker Recognised Bodies where mental health matters, together with all Quaker meetings (Local, Area, ‘Quarterly’, non-geographic, central staff, even international) in relation to mental health. Offering resources and support, QVoMHN could make a significant contribution to the ways in which Quakers speak up for mental health, to each other across the Society of friends; and beyond. But such a transition calls for vision, purpose and capacity.
Our QVoMH Constitution, originally adopted in March 2023, already describes us as “a national network of Quakers who have a concern for mental health and wellbeing. We want to see mental health services reformed in ways that are true to Quaker testimonies and grounded in experience and action. We believe this is central to our corporate Quaker witness. The network will also offer safe opportunities for Friends to explore their own mental health, creativity and spirituality”. This vision continues, whether the ‘network of Quakers’ refers just to current QVoMH members, or also to other Friends across BYM with differing primary concerns (for instance Quakers in Criminal Justice, the Quaker Disability Equality Group, or Quaker Action on Alcohol and Drugs). For all these groups and many more, mental health and wellbeing underpins their work. Could Quaker Voices on Mental Health develop and sustain a network to connect and support them?
The purpose
One might argue that our purpose would be to try something different; but that isn’t enough. Our stated purpose in publishing our book ‘Quaker Voices on Mental Health’ was “to bring before Friends the urgent need for a renewed focus on mental health within the work of Britain Yearly Meeting”. Transitioning to this wider perspective (QVoMHN) would build a mutually supporting network available to all aspects of Quaker Life and Quaker Recognised Bodies, underpinning our corporate Quaker witness. And a significant part of our purpose would also be to continue offering and developing and supporting safe opportunities for Friends to explore their own mental health, creativity and spirituality.
The capacity
That brings us to capacity. How could we do this, when at this point we can’t even keep going as we are? We have discovered over the course of 2025 that, for a variety of entirely understandable reasons, our QVoMH membership is not able to volunteer significant increased capacity, either to take on roles, or to generate sufficient finances to pay others to do so. We may be willing, but we are not able.
And on analysing the situation, we have realised that having a paid administrator is critically important. Certainly, to transition into this new project, the role of a paid QVoMH Administrator would be essential, underpinning and working together with a new Clerk(s). In this new project, the Clerk(s)’s main role (very different from now when a lot of the work is necessarily administrative), supported by the QVoMH Steering Group, would be about developing a new Quaker Voices on Mental Health Network in mutual collaboration with others working for mental health and wellbeing across the Society of Friends.
The plan of action
In order eventually to emerge from the Pause with our vision, purpose and capacity intact, what would need doing?
There are three early tasks, to be started as soon as possible, and crucially in the following order:
1) Securing ongoing funding and management for a part time paid Administrator;
2) Appointing a QVoMH Clerk(s); and
3) Appointing a QVoMH Administrator.
These three elements are all do-able by the members of the current Steering Group and Nominations Group, with members’ support as needed; and bearing in mind that 1) (the funding) might take a while to secure. Once the three elements are in place, we will be able to transition out of the Pause and into the exciting project of developing a new Quaker Voices on Mental Health Network.
A copy of this paper can be downloaded as a PDF file here.