Tackling stigma through football

We are working in partnership with football organisations to harness the power of the beautiful game as a force for social change. We aim to make football more accessible to people with mental health problems and to use the sport to reach new audiences.

Imagine Your Goals

We’ve partnered with the Premier League and Sport Relief on the Imagine Your Goals scheme which runs community projects through 16 clubs.

The projects help people to boost their wellbeing, develop their confidence and play an active role in their communities.

The projects also run activities that bring people with and without mental health problems together through sport, to tackle stigma and discrimination.

Mental health problems can affect anyone - footballers too. I'm pledging to support Time to Change, to help tackle stigma and encourage everyone to realise that it's OK to talk about mental health.
Tony Adams

Football and mental health action group

In 2011 we also worked with a football and mental health action group which included the following organisations:

•    The FA
•    The Premier League
•    The Professional Footballers Association
•    The League Managers Association
•    The Football Foundation
•    The Football League Trust
•    Sporting Chance
•    Kick It Out

We ran a range of activities, including:

Campaigning through football
Encouraging clubs to run mental health activities
Mental health training for coaches

Campaigning through football

We ran campaign activity on match days and with football clubs, including showing advertising on big screens, holding match day events and including messages in programmes.

Encouraging clubs to run mental health activities

We have produced toolkits to help clubs include people with mental health problems as part of their community activities. The toolkits bring together good practice and tips from projects like those under the Imagine Your Goals scheme and can be downloaded from the FA website or ordered from our shop.

Mental health training for coaches

In order to make grassroots football more accessible for people with mental health problems, we ran mental health training sessions for mainstream grassroots football coaches, delivered by people with mental health problems.