source :
Catalyst 4 Change CIC
published : 1 July 20211
Catalyst 4 Change have been commissioned by Birmingham & Solihull Mental Health Foundation Trust (BSMHFT) to work in partnership with them to coordinate your views and experiences through a set of conversation events and then feedback your views about their Patient Carers Race Equalities Framework (PCREF).
PCREF has been established at NHS national level to improve the competency of mental health services so that the experience of BME (Black and Minority Ethnic) patients and carers improves. Making services more accessible and improve the health outcomes for BME people. This framework forms part of the National PCREF development and BSMHFT is one of several pilot sites committed to building their understanding of the impact of their mental health services through the experience of services users, inpatients, carers, and communities.
Catalyst 4 Change will organise conversation spaces for BSMHFT’s inpatient, carers, community groups and voluntary sector organisations, to give feedback on your experience when accessing and receiving mental health services and the changes you would like to see in mental health services and support. Your experiences and views on improvement will then help shape the PCREF for Birmingham.
Who is Catalyst 4 Change?
We are a community interest company formed in 2015, 3 of the 4 directors are African Caribbean with lived experience of mental health problems. Each has 30 or more years’ experience of developing new approaches to community based mental health services for BME communities including user led initiatives, consultation, and engagement; managing health and social care in the voluntary and statutory sector; campaigning and advocating for improved mental health services and for building the capacity of organisations to provide culturally appropriate services.
Our key objective is to contribute towards developing equality of access to mental health services for BME communities, supporting the African and African Caribbean communities to overcome stigma and hesitancy to access mental health services whilst also working with healthcare providers and statutory services to increase cultural awareness in the provision and design of services that are right first time for BME people who require care services.
For more information about Catalyst's work please click here.
Catalyst 4 Change will be holding a range of conversations over the summer to hear your views about how Statutory mental health could be improved for African and Caribbean communities and the standards of care that you would like to see delivered by BSMHFT. We will be sending more details about these events and PCREF shortly!
Finally, we know that your views may have been sought before and you may not have seen any visible improvements in the care or treatment your loved ones, clients or service users have received. The team at Catalyst 4 Change has worked with BSMHFT for the last 3 years and we have witnessed that there is now more commitment to addressing race inequalities across the organisation. They signed Synergi’s National Pledge calling on senior leaders in the NHS Mental Health Trust, Public Bodies and Commissioning Groups to declare their commitment to reduce ethnic inequalities in mental health care systems.
As part of this Pledge, they are required to provide an update on their progress - click on this link to see BSMHFT’s progress. Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust - Synergi Collaborative Centre
Catalyst 4 Change is committed to holding the Trust to account to their declared commitment to tackling race inequalities in mental health services. Take part in our PCREF conversations to ‘turn talk to action’.
We'll be providing further details soon about how you can get involved and contribute to the development of PCREF.
