NHS England is consulting community members and community-led organisations on their Long Term Plan. The Local Healthwatch in Hounslow has been commissioned to undertake consultations to hear from "disadvantaged groups" about their experiences with the NHS.
You may well have missed it under the Brexit deluge but Theresa May announced a major reform of the Mental Health Act this month – the first for 30 years.
She had commissioned Sir Simon Wessely, Regius Professor of Psychiatry at King’s College London and president of the Royal Society of Medicine to examine the legal state of Britain’s mental health system.
His report came out earlier this month. Frankly it is full of warm words but proposes scant action and dumps the problem of better treatment for mental health patients on the NHS.
A number of people have approached me with regards to Trevor Phillips recent article in the Mail newspaper calling for the police to be made exempt of race equality laws to allow them to carry out more stop and search operations on predominantly young black boys in areas with high levels of violent crime.
The report by Simon Wessely, former president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, is headed ‘Modernising the Mental Health Act’ and subtitled ‘increasing choice, reducing compulsion’. There is nothing we can object to in this report except that it fails to recommend any legislative changes at all that would reduce institutional racism. And this is in spite of assurances given by Simon Wessely earlier this year that race was on his agenda for the Review; and that - together with the Race Equality Foundation (REF) - ROTA submitted specific suggestions for such legal changes.
Since 2012 ROTA has been gathering evidence on informal school exclusions - and its various guises such ‘off rolling’ and ‘home schooling’ - to the detriment of pupils and their families who have experienced this. We also have evidence that young BAME pupils may be disproportionately affected. It comes as no surprise to ROTA that not only is this practice continuing in 2018 but may be increasing.
The somewhat violent demonstration in London this weekend in support of jailed right wing extremist Tommy Robinson was foreshadowed by figures released under three months ago by the Home Office.
The figures come from the highly controversial Prevent programme which most people see as a plan to catch young people being radicalised by so called Islamic State and Al Qaeda before they commit atrocities.
With very little publicity and dwarfed by Brexit Theresa May has committed herself to a major reform of the Mental Health Act. Last year she convened a meeting at Downing Street and appointed a former president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, Sir Simon Wessely. to conduct a review.
Symbols are important. For some people, seeing Meghan Markle marry into the monarchy, while a Black preacher expounded the word and a Black Choir sang at the ceremony, was viewed as ushering in a new area of racialised harmony and black cultural acceptance at all levels of British society. If blackness is acceptable to the monarchy, then surely it can be embraced by everyone?
Seminal is a word frequently used to describe 'How Europe Under-developed Africa', Walter Rodney’s opus magnum that swiftly extended itself far beyond its academic crucible when published in 1972. Not since Frantz Fanon’s 'Wretched of the Earth' had a writer so widely transformed how Africa was seen and researched. Rodney’s gift was his ability to synthesize centuries of history around a truism stated clearly early on in the book: “For the greater part of Africa’s history…the changes have been gradual rather than revolutionary;” the result of centuries of outside exploitation.
Suman Fernando is a gentle soft spoken consultant psychiatrist, lecturer and honorary professor at the London Metropolitan University. The 85 year old is not the sort of person at first sight to produce such a searing critique of racism in the UK and the US and the baleful role psychiatrists have had in treating ethnic minorities in both countries.
