The Lighthouse Construction Industry Charity spent £1.13m supporting the construction industry in 2019, it has revealed.
The organisation saw a 56% increase in demand for its services during the year through its 24/7 Construction Industry Helpline. The number of construction families who needed wellbeing and financial support rose to 2,616, with a total of £703,641 of charitable giving to support them.
It spent a further £411,962 on its education and training programme with a project managed on behalf of the Construction Industry Training Board (CITB) to train 300 mental health first aid instructors, who in turn trained 3,000 mental health first aiders.
Meanwhile it invested just over £21,000 in innovation, specifically on the Construction Industry Helpline app to provide information, advice and guidance on a variety of wellbeing issues. The app is also being developed to meet the needs of companies with major sites and joint venture projects who want to provide additional site-specific real-time information such as details on health and safety briefings and site inductions.
Bill Hill, CEO of the Lighthouse Construction Industry Charity said: “We are working tirelessly to ensure that our construction workers and their families have access to the help they nee. Our helpline cards have now been distributed to almost 600,000 of our workforce and our app has been downloaded over 20,000 times.
“We will continue to deliver pro-active interventions to ensure that situations do not reach a life-critical stage and our mission is to ensure that no worker feels alone in a crisis. To support our helpline, we have recently introduced professional caseworkers who ensure that applicants receive all the possible support available to them, both from us and other organisations. This means that the charity is spending less per case while delivering a more holistic and higher-quality service.”
The charity has also extended its mental health training to offer an increased variety of construction-focussed mental health training, including its ‘lunch and learn’ mental health sessions, and Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) England two-day training courses.
To access the helpline’s team of experts, call the Construction Industry Helpline on 0345 605 1956 or visit www.constructionindustryhelpline.com
