Important News from Alternatives

In November 2025 the trustees took the difficult decision to look at winding up Alternatives Trust East London during 2026. This decision was formalised, with heavy hearts, in January 2026.

Our 2025 Impact Report celebrates the last full year of Alternatives’ great work and transformational impact.

The charity lost a lot of reserves over the move to new premises in 2023, which has been impossible to make up in the current economic climate. That means there is very little buffer to tide us over any funding gaps. With the resignation of our beloved CEO Lizi in November 2025, trustees could not take the risk of trying to recruit with less than a year of funding left for this role.

Alternatives is continuing to deliver all its services in full until the end of the summer term in July. We are also using the time to find new sources of help for our service users, and to support staff and volunteers to identify new roles.

New Interim CEO

To help lead the team through this difficult process, trustees internally recruited Sharon Gordon as interim CEO for one day a week. Sharon has volunteered as a counsellor for Alternatives for the past two years and stepped up last year to help develop our counselling enterprise. With past experience as a charity CEO, she is ideally qualified for this task.

Project Seed

Over the past year Alternatives has piloted a paid for counselling service, providing therapeutic support to frontline workers at other local charities. This has had excellent feedback. Caroline and Sharon are working with a consultant to see if this could be scaled up as a viable social enterprise, with profits used to provide free or low-cost mental health support for vulnerable women.

We are calling this Project Seed. We’ve used a branching tree as the logo for Alternatives for many years, and we hope that this might be a little seed from that tree that has the potential to grow again, into something more sustainable.

“When I am heavy in my heart I can call and we get a way to sort it out. She helps me to fill in forms. She has been very, very helpful.”

“I am learning to regulate myself, to see things from a different perspective… Because Alternatives is so diverse, there is a sense of safety. I can’t express how different, how valuable that is.”

“Alternatives is my second home. When I feel tired, anxious, worried, it’s the place I come to for support.. [my child] has socialized before starting nursery. Where we live, she is confined. Here she has space to move around, toys to play with.”

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About Alternatives

Alternatives works to support marginalised women and families within Newham by providing free and accessible mental health counselling, practical advocacy and ongoing community.

We operate as a compassionate-ecosystem, recognising that all people are capable of needing and giving support in different ways. We are proud to be largely lived-experience-led and trauma-informed by design.

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