Farewell from Mayday CEO, Alex Fox OBE

As you may be aware, this year I alongside the Board of Trustees, led Mayday Trust into a merger with a brilliant and radical mental health charity called Platfform.

We share a mission to change how public services and charities think and behave, and for several years we’ve been collaborating on developing strengths-based and trauma-informed approaches to working with people and being led by them, challenging what isn’t working in public service systems. Mayday is now a subsidiary of Platfform and over the coming period the Mayday team and work will transfer across to Platfform.

This has put Mayday on a stable financial footing and will in time enable the organisations’ work to be scaled sustainably in England and Wales, at a time which has never been harder to sustain charities. As a result of these changes, my role with Mayday will finish at the end of 2023 and I will be moving on.

I joined Mayday because it is a rare example of a charity that was able to hear the people it sought to support saying, “This isn’t working for us” and then to change everything it did as a result, building a model of working that I’ve heard countless people and organisations describe as a beacon of hope and possibility in tough times.

I want to say how grateful I’ve been to work, even if only for a short time, with a truly unique charity, and a brilliant team of radicals. I want to thank the Mayday team and Board for everything they’ve done to keep the mission alive during an exceptionally difficult year. I wish them and the wider Platfform team all the best in their continuing mission for a better, more human way to walk alongside people during their toughest times.