The webinar was organised by the NIHR Mental Health Implementation Network (MHIN), a national programme which aims to drive national collaborations and changes in mental health practice. It brought together around 75 participants including clinicians, mental health service users, carers, policymakers and researchers.
Once I was able to make sense of my own personal experience, I was determined to try to use that experience to help others and to improve access to mental healthcare for people who need it most. We want this event to be a showcase for the work that has been achieved locally, regionally and nationally and working towards the change that we want to create and that we all want to see.
Dr Jay Das-Munshi, a clinical reader in social and psychiatric epidemiology at King's College London and honorary consultant psychiatrist with South London & Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust, outlined the background to the MHIN. She also explained how the programme prioritised and selected the PCREF as the intervention to evaluate, as it met all of the criteria set out by the partners within the MNIN, including people with lived experience.
The PCREF was developed in response to the 2018 Mental Health Act Review, which highlighted stark inequities that Black and other racially minoritised groups were more likely to come into care under coercive and involuntary pathways and also much less likely to get good care.
The PCREF is co-produced with patients and carers and is the first anti-racism framework for mental health in the NHS. It takes a participatory approach and is mandatory across the NHS (from April 2024).
Dr Jacqui Dyer MBE, chair of the Advancing Mental Health Equalities Taskforce and the Patient and Carer Race Equality Framework Steering Group, NHS England,
I am driven by the fight for a fairer system where people from racialised communities no longer have significantly worse experiences.
I was aware of the workforce equality standards and questioned why we did not have in place the same standard for patients and carers, those that are receiving the services. The feedback that emerges from patients and carers must be the most valuable feedback that any service can receive, in order to ensure that their service provision is responding to the needs of the communities they serve.
The webinar included presentations from:
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