Mental Health Equalities

We work closely with Derbyshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust and voluntary and community partners to improve the delivery of mental health services to people from diverse communities in Derbyshire.

In particular we focus on Access, Competency and Assurance.

Access
- We feed back on experiences and common issues to DHCFT to improve BME patient care
- We raise awareness of mental health in BME communities
- We highlight and promote available mental health services
- We enable better BME engagement in planning and monitoring of services
- We improve communication between agencies on mental health equality issues

Competency
- We provide training to staff in mainstream mental health services in cultural capability
- We support staff to understand the Equality Delivery System (EDS) and to deliver and measure services that meet EDS outcomes
- We promote the spread of good practice to staff
- We provide feedback and recommendations on good practice to DHCFT planning forums.

Assurance
- We train staff on the importance of obtaining and recording accurate data to evidence reach of mental health services
- We deliver, or signpost to, training on how to conduct effective Equality Impact Assessments and other requirements of the Equality Act
- We support involvement of BME communities in planning and monitoring the delivery of mental health services through signposting into relevant patient representative structures, and planning events.

If you would like more information on the Mental Health Equalities programme, please contact Emmanuel Williams, our Community Equalities Officer by clicking here.

Our Equality and Diversity policy can be viewed here.

More information about our Mental Health Equalities programme will soon be available here soon.