Website of the Department of Health

Programme progress

Delivering Race Equality in mental health care: an action plan for reform inside and outside services is a comprehensive and results-oriented programme for tackling racial inequality in mental health care. Since Delivering Race Equality (DRE) was published in January 2005, several key components of the five-year action plan are already operating.

Seventeen focused implementation sites (FIS) are up and running at Strategic Health Authorities across the country.  Focused implementation sites facilitate and guide change in BME mental health care by helping to identify and spread good ideas and practice. They vary considerably in size and demography, from the major urban areas to smaller rural areas.

Each FIS was allowed to bid up to £50,000 to use for an innovative project. FIS sites have now received up to £50,000 to fund Value Added Projects that will support progress towards the DRE 12 characteristics FISs are also forming a number of learning networks programmes including:

• values-based practice
• promoting physical health and safety in practice
• commissioning culturally sensitive services
• the role of community development workers; and
• workforce education and training.
  

The first annual Count Me In Census was taken in March 2005 in order to better monitor the mental health service experience of BME service users.  The Count Me In: Mental Health and Ethnicity Census, published on the 7 December 2005, was commissioned as part of the five-year action plan Delivering Race Equality in Mental Health (DRE).  Carried out by the MHAC in March 2005 (in partnership with the Healthcare Commission and NIMHE), the findings underline the urgent need to implement DRE to help reduce inequalities and discrimination in mental health services. The census covers all in-patients in mental health facilities and is designed to:

• obtain strong baseline figures of the number of BME patients using mental health in-patient services.
• ensure that mental health providers are able to provide accurate and sustainable high-quality patient ethnicity data gathering.
• investigate the perceptions of both patients and care commissioners as to how culturally capable mental health services are.
  

The ‘Count Me In: Mental Health and Ethnicity Census’ was repeated in March 2006 and March 2007.  The Count Me In Census will be repeated annually.  The 2006 census results are broadly similar to 2005 census results, but it should be borne in mind that the figures describe the situation almost a year ago, and that between them the 2005 and 2006 census reports only reflect year one of the five year plan.

The ‘Count Me In: Mental Health and Ethnicity Census’ will be piloted in prisons this year, with plans in place to roll it out fully in 2008.    

As part of DRE, the Government has commissioned eighty community engagement projects in primary care trusts (PCTs) to help build capacity in non-statutory sector and work to build partnerships between the non-statutory and statutory sectors. The National Institute for Mental Health in England (NIMHE) invested £2m in the community engagement scheme.

The community engagement projects will help build stronger links between mental health services and BME communities.   All 80 projects are now in place achieving the DRE Action Plan target.

PCTs have been funded  to recruit 500 community development workers (CDWs), who will work to bridge the gap between BME community members and mental health services. CDWs will work with and support communities including the BME voluntary sector, help build capacity within them, and ensure the views of the minority communities are taken into account by the statutory sector during planning and delivery of services.  There are now well over 200 CDWs in post.