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

IntroductionThe basis for this guideThis guide is based upon the views of young people from Black andminority ethnic (BME) communities – and the staff from a wide range ofservices who work with them - gathered from a national study of theirperceptions and experience of services that can offer support for mentalhealth problems, including specialist child and adolescent mental healthservices (CAMHS). The guide also takes account of the relevant findingsfrom the published literature. The study – Minority Voices – represents theviews of young people from many different backgrounds, includingrefugees and asylum seekers. More details, including a literature review andan overview of the services from which those given in this guide asexamples of good practice were selected, can be found in the researchreport 1 and on the YoungMinds website at: www.youngminds.org.uk.What is good practice?Good practice depends upon meeting needs effectively and encompassesthe dimensions of what good quality services should be, set out byMaxwell in 1984: 2 Equitable Accessible Acceptable Appropriate Effective Ethical EfficientThese dimensions are inter-related, in that equitable provision is, to agreater or lesser extent, dependent upon matters of accessibility andacceptability. It cannot be seen as equitable if a service exists but it isknown to be poorly acceptable to the population that it serves. Similarly, itis not ethical if a known effective service is only accessible to some andnot others. For a service to be effective, it is not enough that theinterventions delivered are known to be efficacious; the service must betaken up and, therefore, be accessible and acceptable.In order to describe practice as good, what is done should havedemonstrable positive effects. While evidence for the efficacy of clearlydefined interventions in child and adolescent mental health (CAMH) isgrowing all the time, a great deal is still not known, especially about whatworks in terms of real life service approaches, as distinct from the researchsituation. We are also just beginning to appreciate what can be learnt fromthe clients’ perspective on what works. For these reasons, the servicesdescribed in this guide are largely working in ways that indicate goodpractice (often based on good evidence) but have rarely been subject toformal evaluation.04