News

Here’s what our Advocates for Change  – Jamie Crew, Engagement and Participation Co-ordinator has to say…

Our Peer Advocates Chris Ogidih and Sidra Zahoor have worked hard on a one to one basis with clients and we are pleased to have been able to support a total of 47 clients during the lifetime of the project.  Issues have been varied and include supporting people to raise complaints or concerns about poor and culturally unresponsive treatment in hospitals or in community mental health teams, supporting people to improve their inadequate housing situations, and helping people access the welfare benefits that they are entitled to. We have found that with the many cuts to  statutory services these basic needs are not being met, and Black and other racialised communities are doubly disadvantaged.

The particular success of our project has been down to our peer advocates being able to empathise  with clients from their own lived experience of having mental health issues and being from a racialised community and understanding what people are going through, a relationship that clients have said they do not often receive from other health professionals.

We are pleased to have been able to make people’s voices heard in liaising with mental health teams and social workers on their behalf to enable their treatment to be more culturally responsive, we have given people helpful information and support to tackle their housing problems, and we have helped people navigate an often overwhelming and complicated benefits system, issues that are challenging at the best of times but particularly difficult for people to tackle on their own during a period of poor mental health.

 We celebrate the links we have made with other community organisations during the project who have offered valuable support, including Cranstoun Housing, the Birmingham MIND Wellbeing Hub, and the New Testament Church of God. In addition to working with the African and Caribbean Community Initiative we are pleased to have been able to engage well with the South Asian Community in Birmingham including links with the Khidmat Centre and Inspiring Sisters, and our advocate Sidra has been able to speak fluent Urdu which has greatly enabled this process. As the project comes to an end we are pleased that our clients will be able to access the continued support they need through the links we have made with these community organisations, in addition to being able to offer support from our own services at SACMHF, including outreach and counselling services.

We are hopeful that through the successes of the project and through the detailed evidencing of all its outcomes by SACMHF and it partners Pohwer and  Catalyst4Change, that we will be able to attract funding to continue this service in Birmingham and Soihull in the near future.