As NHS England's first anti-racism framework, the Patient and Carer Race Equality Framework (PCREF) helps NHS mental health trusts and service providers to improve services for people from diverse ethnic, racial and cultural backgrounds.
The PCREF is a partnership with local services, including the police and local authorities, as well as community and voluntary organisations, patients, service users, carers, families and communities. Our aim is to make sure diverse and minoritised communities are working together to make the PCREF part of standard practice for NHS trusts.
We are holding community co-production events in November. Please see the What's New? October-November 2024 section below and visit the involving communities page.
Let’s take action together to improve mental health services for people from diverse ethnic, racial and cultural backgrounds!
Join our movement; building better for our Black Country communities. Come along to one of our community workshops to co-produce the priorities for action for The Patient and Carer Race Equality Framework (PCREF); NHS England’s anti-racism framework for NHS mental health trusts and service providers.
There is an event in each Black Country locality: Dudley, Sandwell, Walsall and Wolverhampton. They are aimed at: system partners; voluntary, community and social enterprises; community leaders, representatives and activists; and governors and staff from the NHS Trust.
See below for details and book your place!
Service users from racialised communities (and their families and carers) should feel more involved with the organisation, and see opportunities to work in partnership to develop and review local PCREF plans. They will also feel that their voice is being heard, including with the Trust Board of Directors.
Service users and patients will know that their experience is being listened to as the organisation will regularly look at data and review their feedback to help make continual improvements to services. They will know how to give feedback, and will feel comfortable and confident to do so.
Services will be better tailored to the needs of the community.
The PCREF has three key aspects:
Leadership and governance
Our Trust board will lead on establishing and monitoring plans of action to reduce health inequalities.
Data
New data on improvements in reducing health inequalities will be published, as well as details on ethnicity in all existing data we collect.
Feedback
There will be visible and effective ways for our patients and carers to feedback (and feel comfortable and confident to do so), as well as clear processes to act and report on that feedback.
We recognise that people have different experiences depending on their race and background. We are more open about having conversations about race and inequalities, and will be working hard to come up with solutions to address racism and racial inequality.
We want to encourage our patients, service users, carers, families, community and voluntary organisations, governors and members of the public to get involved with working in partnership to develop the PCREF.
We also want to hear about your experience of ethnicity recording, ethnicity, culture and mental health.
Share your experience and views with the team
You can contact the team by emailing bchft.pcref@nhs.net.
Share your experience and views anonymously
We understand that some people may want to share information, experiences or ideas related to aspects of the PCREF without disclosing who they are. We have provided the anonymous form below.
We will provide general updates in PCREF communications about this feedback, including what we have done with it and why. This will not include any specific information that is shared in the form and will only reference general themes or topics. We will do this so that those colleagues who share anonymous feedback know that we are listening, learning and acting on what they tell us.
Keep up-to-date with our new PCREF newsletter
We wil be sharing news about our work to implement the PCREF, in partnership with our communities and staff, in our regular PCREF newsletter. Read the latest issue which includes an introduction from Kuli Kaur-Wilson, Chief Strategy and Partnerships Officer.
The people leading the implementation of the PCREF at the Trust are:
Nageena Bibi, Head of Mental Health Act Legislation
Olivia Horgan, Health Inequalities Strategy and Delivery Manager
The Executive Lead for PCREF is:
Kuli Kaur-Wilson, Chief Strategy and Partnerships Officer
You can contact Nageena, Olivia and Kuli by emailing:
- Read our PCREF leaflet
- PCREF on the NHS England website
- Easy-read version of the PCREF on the NHS England website
A note on language
The PCREF was co-developed with racialised communities, patients and carers. As a first step, it was important to set out the terminology related to the race and cultural identity of people from communities disproportionately impacted when accessing mental health services.
It was important to acknowledge that current legislative terminology used to describe certain race and cultural identity do not always reflect people’s unique intersectional needs and lived experiences.
There is more information on the Centre for Mental Health website, however we are always listening and learning so please get in touch if you have views or resources to share.
