SHOCK news that an award-winning women’s mental health charity will shut has left its users reeling in anger and despair.

More than 300 women were last year referred to the Shipley-based Isis Project for Women and Children which has run for more than two decades and is commissioned by local NHS chiefs.

Letters sent out from the lifeline charity’s trustees breaking the news that all classes and groups at its John Street premises will stop next month have been described by women using the well-being and recovery service as a “bombshell”.

Trustees did attend a meeting with around 50 users after the project’s employed manager insisted they give an explanation for the decision.

But the women who attend its sessions and use its creche facilities were left feeling let down, said Joanne Farnhill-Paish, 55, from Baildon, who turned to the charity for help with depression after a marriage break-up in 2014.

The mum of teenage twins said if the Isis project ends hundreds of women, like her, relying on it to help re-build confidence and their futures will have nowhere else to go.

She said: “They are feeling sad, angry and let down. It is a lifeline and many won’t be able to cope without it. We have to find a way of salvaging it. We were only given loose reasons at the meeting which seemed to be that the trustees wanted to retire and were unwilling to hand over their baby. They said wanting to wind it down had been on the cards for the past five years and adverts to find new trustees had not been successful, but we had not even been asked.”

Another service user - Ann Colley, 56, from Bradford - who was also at the meeting said: “There were about 50 women in that room with lots of skills who were never given a fair chance to become trustees, because we never knew about it.”

The latest unaudited accounts registered with Companies House for the year ending March 31, 2016, showed the organisation had reserves amounting to £147,018, including a Future Needs Fund standing at £84,023.

There has been no comment from Isis’s trustees despite being approached by the Telegraph & Argus.

A spokesman for NHS Bradford City and NHS Bradford Districts clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) said: “The CCGs, along with other commissioners, have funded the project and very much value the work the team has done. We have offered our help to explore any options around continuity of service for the women currently being supported by the project. We will look to continue to offer a women-only service and are scoping interim solutions.”