James Holland's Story
In 2007 the Healthcare Commission invited the Hertfordshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust to take part in a race equality review to share good practice across the NHS. The invitation recognised the Trust’s work to implement the Government’s five-year action plan, Delivering Race Equality in Mental Health Care (DRE). DRE aims to help mental health services provide care that fully meets the needs of black and minority ethnic (BME) patients and to build stronger links with diverse communities. The Trust is working with a number of individuals and organisations to improve its services for BME patients. “We are trying to get more DRE actions delivered through staff members, voluntary organisations, carers and service users; it’s about getting everyone involved”, says James Holland, Equalities Manager.
Prioritising race equality in the workforce
The Trust has put in substantial effort to involve all staff in its equality and diversity agenda. Both cultural competency and ‘equality matters’ training are delivered to Trust staff, challenging assumptions, stereotypes and discrimination around equality and diversity issues. Twelve staff members are now qualified equality trainers and deliver ‘Equality Matters’ training.
Work has also focused on developing DRE’s Clinical Race Equality Trailblazers programme, which involves BME service users and carers in assessing staff’s cultural competency.
James Holland explains: “We engage with and identify individual users and carers from BME communities or organisations to develop them into ‘experts by experience’. They are then trained to support staff within the Trust across a range of cultural competencies.”
DRE’s Community Development Workers (CDWs), who work with BME communities and with local health services around the country, are closely involved in influencing internal planning at the Trust. Senior CDW Sachdev Seyan leads a monthly local area supervision network where service leads, commissioners and service users share good practice ideas, raise concerns and discuss solutions to race equality issues.
Engaging local BME communities
Developing culturally sensitive and translated materials for BME communities is a key priority at the Trust. “At the moment we are exploring alternative communications channels, including developing mental health DVDs for BME communities. We hope that by using service users and carers as actors in the productions we can dispel fears and portray an accurate and comforting picture of mental health services,” says James.
The DVDs are set to be produced using voiceovers in 15 different languages. 10,000 copies will be distributed by voluntary organisations and at GP surgeries, and the resource will also be available on the Hertfordshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust website.
In October 2008 the Trust celebrates Black History Month and is holding a series of events including poetry reading and seminars.
Sharing experiences
As part of its work to share best practice, the Trust also chairs the Hertfordshire DRE Project Board, designed to ensure that all race equality projects feed into a central hub so that other Trusts and PCTs can share their experiences. The quarterly strategic group is made up of a mixture of voluntary and statutory organisations and also invites service users and carers to put forward their experiences.
“We want to continue to share more of what we do with other Trusts, who will hopefully be able to learn from our experiences,” says James.
