Women who have fled war and persecution in their home countries are not protected from abuse and violence here in the UK, in the country they thought would make them safe, finds ground-breaking new research published today by the Refugee Council and ASAP. ‘Women seeking asylum: Safe from violence in the UK?’ looks at how the asylum support…
This is an outline of the discussions and points raised at our alternative consultation event: “Hardly Hard to Reach: We Are Having Our Say” on 12 June 2018 as well as REAP’s Networking Conference: “Building New Lives: Refugees in West London” and outreach within our networks outside those events. The response was co-produced with people…
In follow up of our alternative consultation event ‘Hardly Hard to Reach: We Are Having Our Say’ feeding into North West London (NWL) Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG)’s Equality Objectives [L1] and the Open Letter we sent to newly elected London Councillors to call for mental health equality for people from Black, Asian and Minority, Ethnic…
Open College Network has this month given our training provided to refugee communities an accreditation at entry level 3. This training is provided by our Active Lives, Healthy Minds Project to our refugee community partners. The main objective of the project is to prevent admission to acute mental health services by providing community based mental health…
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…
Hardly Hard to Reach: We Are Having Our Say – was the title of a major consultation event which took place on 12 June 2018 at CAIA’s Hayashen Centre. Attended by over 50 people to express their views on the development and updating of Equality Objectives (EO) and Equality Delivery System (EDS), a statutory obligation designed…
Kindred Minds – A Call for Social Justice' resources The manifesto is a unique resource, has been written by BME mental health service users and has a comprehensive vision for the policy and practice changes needed to improve the mental well-being of BME mental health service users. Manifesto executive summary: https://www.nsun.org.uk/Handlers/Download.ashx?IDMF=4f98b6f4-7b62-4366-a8b8-691415e7fa8e Manifesto full text: https://www.nsun.org.uk/Handlers/Download.ashx?IDMF=ee94e055-6a08-4925-8f27-427f16c43ca9…
On 1st June, Suman Fernando and ROTA presented an Institutional Racism and the Mental Health Act Review conference, hosted at University of East London. The event showcased ways of counteracting institutional racism in mental health services by promoting culture-change in professional practice and safeguarding human rights of people who use mental health services or are caught up…
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. This month it published an interim…
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…