Minority voices: Research into the access and acceptability of ... - MMC

• Support for young people with dual diagnosis.• Provision for young people in the 16-18 year age group.• How to engage with socially isolated young people.! Identified unmet needs specific to young people from Black and minorityethnic groupsA number of the YOT respondents acknowledged the lack of support for young people needinghelp with grief, past traumatic experiences and bereavement, and noted that these issues maybe especially marked for young refugees and asylum seekers. A lack of understanding withregard to entitlement to services also made these young people particularly wary of asking forhelp until often a crisis point was reached.Other problems affecting access to mental health support were as follows:• Language barriers and social isolation, particularly for young refugees and asylumseekers.• A lack of interpreter services and translated materials for those who had got as far asmaking contact with services.• For young Asian people, there were some suggestions that their fears of being ‘labelled’are very marked since seeking help is viewed as ‘going outside of the family’.• The lack of younger staff from Black and minority ethnic groups in CAMHS was thoughtto deter some young people from minority ethnic groups from feeling that they couldtalk about their difficulties.• Problems in service co-ordination - notably between education services and mentalhealth services. This was recognised as underlying some young people’s sense of being‘passed around’ when they had tried to get help.The need for information for parents and support for young people from Black and minorityethnic groups in dealing with inter-generational issues and pressures from parents was alsonoted by a number of respondents. The complexity of these issues is highlighted by thefollowing quote:“We have had requests for support from young people who are trying to contend with culturalexpectations of different generations and who are very stressed by the experience. They askfor help in negotiating with parents but then are often too scared to let this happen in case itmakes things worse…” (Connexions respondent)! Identified strategies for promoting access for young people from Black andminority ethnic groupsServices reported a number of strategies aimed at promoting their work. These included morehome visiting, outreach work and liaison work with community groups and parents to improveunderstanding of the principles of treatment and assessment by mental health services.Various health promotion strategies to raise awareness more generally in the local communitywere also reported.Ethnic monitoring was reported to be in place in just under half of the services who responded,with others indicating that targets were being put in place to develop better informationsystems, including ethnic monitoring.A number indicated that, where possible, the service employed staff from different minorityethnic groups and tried to ensure that the staff group reflected the local community. Severalalso highlighted that this was often very difficult to achieve:“Statutory services, including Connexions, have difficulties recruiting professionals from BMEcommunities: this reflects negatively on young people’s perceptions and aspirations…” (LeavingCare Team respondent)Minority Voices Research Report21