Our purpose

At Charlie Waller, our vision is of a world where people understand and talk openly about mental health, where young people and those who support them are equipped to maintain and enhance their mental health and wellbeing, and have the confidence to seek help when they need it.

The Charlie Waller Trust was created by the Waller family in 1997 in response to the loss of their son and brother Charlie to suicide having suffered from depression. We have since become one of the UK’s most respected mental health charities.

Our overarching mission is to educate young people and those with responsibility for them - so parents and carers, teachers, college and university staff, employers, GPs and practice nurses - about their mental health and wellbeing.

Our focus is on supporting all young people, throughout their journey from primary school age to the early years of their working lives, recognising that the points of transition in that journey can represent moments of particular vulnerability.

We aim to improve their understanding of mental health, to give them the knowledge and skills to look out for and support themselves and those around them, and to give them greater confidence in talking openly about the subject. By enabling more open and better-informed conversations, we aim to further reduce the stigma that still surrounds mental health.

The majority of our work is delivered through schools, parents, colleges and universities, and workplaces, in the form of consultancy, training, and the provision of educational and practical resources. We seek to establish enduring partnerships with such organisations, in order to bring about sustained change and lasting improvement.

This being our focus, we do not offer direct one-to-one support or advice for individuals. However, through our sponsorship of the Charlie Waller Institute at the University of Reading, we facilitate the training of clinicians in evidence-based psychological treatments, and associated research, so helping to increase the availability of expert help to those individuals when they need it.

Overall, our approach is:

Positive - we focus on increasing wellbeing, early intervention and the importance of offering hope.

Proven - our consultancy, training and resources are all evidence-based.

Practical – we give people workable strategies and tools to care for their mental health and support others.

The cornerstone of Charlie Waller’s offer is that our training should be free at the point of need – this has been a key element of our offer since the charity’s inception in 1997. We are not directly funded by Local Authorities or Clinical Commissioning Groups, so the majority of our work is enabled through fundraising.

Learn more about how you can get involved and support our work through fundraising and donations.