The pandemic has actually been a catalyst in Greater Manchester to ensure we are prioritising reducing ethnic inequalities. Due to the disproportional impact of Covid on ethnic communities, it concentrated our efforts and provided the impetus for us to invest with multiple BAME organisations supporting our communities.
The impact on BAME communities during the pandemic was significant with disproportionate numbers of deaths leading to high levels of demand for mental health support and intervention.
We are working across the Greater Manchester mental health system with multiple stakeholders through which we have commissioned a number of BAME organisations to support our ethnic communities:
Jewish Community Holistic Mental Health
This is a partnership between Jewish Action for Mental Health (JAMH) and Neshomo. JAMH have been working to increase their awareness of mental illness in the Jewish community and offer practical guidance in identifying signs of acute psychological distress.
Greater Manchester Neshomo is a Jewish, culturally sensitive, confidential mental health charity for adults. They have been operating a holistic provision offering befriending, mentoring, counselling and therapy to those whose mental health has been affected by the Covid-19 pandemic.
BAME Holistic Mental Health
The Manchester BME Network CIC have been supporting BME groups and organisations of all sizes to become more effective and successful and to play their full part in contributing to communities in Manchester. They’re providing a culturally appropriate holistic mental health support service for BAME individuals predominately of South Asian ethnic background (but not exclusive to), recovering from and affected by Covid-19.
Training and Support for Services and Exiles (TS4SE)
TS4SE Cooperative have been working with refugee and migrant community groups and local community groups that want to improve how they work with their diverse local populations.
TS4SE are providing regular briefings and train-the-trainer sessions; gathering and collating user stories, providing development support and capacity building to research and develop sustainable new models of working that allow for working remotely or in person with social distancing.
They are also supporting smaller refugee-led community organisations to develop remote befriending for isolated individuals, focusing on co-production of culturally specific health promotion and wellbeing messages.
Yaran North West
Yaran North West was established as a not-for-profit organisation to provide a variety of services to meet the needs of vulnerable adults, new immigrants, families and couples in Greater Manchester who need urgent help with counselling advocacy, recovery and wellbeing. They are providing bilingual accredited mental health practitioners and a bilingual befriending mentor who will provide online befriending and mentoring sessions.
Caribbean & African Health Network (CAHN)
CAHN have successfully mobilised a support offer into the Caribbean and African community that provides a bespoke mental health service. This includes online access to trained counsellors and volunteers that helps to reduce social isolation, i.e., social distance video walks with clients.
Wai Yin
Wai Yin have set up a support group for Chinese men and women who present with mental distress and difficulties relating to the specific range of socio-cultural issues. They’re providing professional and holistic support which tailors to socio-cultural identities. The holistic model allows participants to navigate the different complex issues of mental health difficulties, sociocultural and financial practicalities.
These partnerships have been strengthened throughout the pandemic with support to these organisations being extended to March 2022 and a commitment to ensure sustainable support and investment into BAME communities for the future.
Greater Manchester Health & Social Care Partnership (GMHSCP) has supported (via financial awards) a number of BAME organisations throughout the Covid pandemic to ensure the needs of BAME communities were fully met by the establishment of culturally and religiously sensitive services.
As a result of these commissioned services, we meet regularly with the delivery organisations to ensure we are fully meeting the needs of our BAME communities.
The following data was derived from the interim evaluation of the six services:
The demand for the BAME services has not abated, with the recognition that these services will be required to be sustained over a longer period of time.
As a result of the initial impact of the services we were in a position to extend the financial support to these services until April 2022.
We have fully committed to ring-fencing funding to support the reduction of ethnic inequalities as part of our NHS Long Term Plan delivery period.
We have recently undertaken work with Sir Michael Marmot and the Centre for Health Equity and one of the recommendations in that report is to “Develop publicly accessible data on equity in health, wellbeing and the social determinants of health within local authorities and strengthen monitoring by ethnicity at the local level”.
Very positive based on the outcomes we have seen as a result of the investment that we have provided to multiple BAME organisations to support their response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Please see the GMHSCP Evaluation for progress report.
We haven’t faced any significant challenges as the Greater Manchester Health and Social Care system has realised the need to support BAME communities, especially with the disproportionate impact that they have suffered during the Covid-19 pandemic.
We will continue to monitor and evaluate the impact of the services we commission to ensure that they deliver the required reduction in ethnic inequalities.
In Greater Manchester (GM), we are working to refresh the VCSE accord across GM. That provides a route for us to develop new relationships, insights and services through the connection to 17,000 VCSE and faith organisations across GM.
In addition, we are working with our colleagues at Greater Manchester Combined Authorities who are coordinating the GM Race Equality Panel (convened by the Mayor).
Very positive based on the BAME services we have mobilised.
Due to the nature of partnership working within the GM mental health system, we are able to mobilise and effectively deliver without any major issues.
We have set up a GM Mental Health BAME Working Group that will ensure we continue to work in partnership with all the key stakeholders.
We are part of the national Advancing Mental Health Equalities Taskforce and we are sharing our best practice via that channel to ensure other areas of England are able to learn from our work programme.
Positive response from the national team and other areas.
The key issue is the lack of genuine action by leaders at NHSE/I. There has been lots of positive rhetoric by we are not seeing any practical developments to mitigate the inequalities gap.
We will continue to lobby the powers to be and promote the work that we’ve done here in Greater Manchester as best practice
We are working with all our locality colleagues across Greater Manchester (GM) to ensure they are fully committed to sustainable support into their respective BAME communities.
The development of the ‘Living Well’ model across GM will help expedite this as the model supports the ethos of meeting the specific needs of the local population.
Positive, with commitment to pick up the recurrent support into respective local organisations that support their BAME communities.
Constructive dialogue to date so we are not envisaging any issues.
Work with localities to drive sustainable change through partnership working in communities, supported by local BAME VCSE organisations.
We are working closely with our internal research team who will prioritise this commitment to ensure we have the relevant research and data available to make informed commissioning decisions on an ongoing basis.
This is work in progress.
None whatsoever.
Maintain a focus on research and policy development across our programme of delivery.
Yes as it ensures we are part of a national collaborative working approach to achieve the same goal of reducing ethnic inequalities within our respective systems.
Based on the positive findings in the interim evaluation report of the six services and instructions by NHSE in Phase 2 and Phase 3 Covid response planning; ‘Ensure that you continue to take account of inequalities in access to mental health services, and in particular the needs of BAME communities’, and that our response ‘Explicitly tackles fundamental challenges including support for our staff, and action on inequalities and prevention’, there is a clear need to continue to support BAME communities.
As a result, we are now in the process of developing a proposal for a sustainable Greater Manchester approach to culturally specific mental health services. This should lead to appropriate levels of investment into VCSE-led culturally specific services.
However, we also want to ensure that any service developments are interlinked with existing mental health services within the Greater Manchester mental health system, so all our clinical pathways are fully integrated.
With our working group in place and senior commitment, I am not envisaging any issues.
On 25th November 2021, Synergi will host a National Pledge Alliance Symposium for Pledge Makers, Pledge Supporters, Synergi Creative Spaces partners and communities of interest, inspired by Pledge commitment 4: To provide national leadership on this critical issue.
We would wish to maintain a close working partnership with other Pledge Makers so we can effectively share learning and good practice.
The Pledge provides the necessary drive to ensure we, as a Greater Manchester Health and Social Care system, remain focused on delivering sustainable services to meet the needs of the ethnic minorities within Greater Manchester.