The Study Day itself was about ‘parental mental illness and what helps’, with particular reference to parents and families from Black and minority ethnic communities, and was both inspiring and disquieting.
The keynote speaker Savita Ayling, CAMHS Delivering Race Equality Lead at CSIP, debunked some of the misunderstandings around the ‘BME’ language that is often used in relation to the range of ethnic and cultural groups that now make up Britain’s population. She pointed out that having ‘Black’ at the start of this expression leads people to think in terms of race and colour, when what we should be thinking about is ethnicity, culture and origin. In fact, the fastest growing ethnic group in the UK is children of mixed heritage, and the biggest growth of people from different origins arriving in the last five years include people from Eastern Europe, Iran and Iraq, Somalia and Eritrea, and Portugal (see www.camhs.org.uk for IPPR 2005 report ‘Beyond Black and White’). Savita reminded us of our appalling track record in supporting and integrating people who arrived some sixty years ago on the Emperor Windrush, and asked whether we are going to do any better with the newer additions to our country. But there was also a message of hope as Savita spoke of the work of the CAMHS Support Service where she works, which developed cultural competence training, including the need to connect with local places and groups where different communities meet, such as cafes and faith groups. Finally Savita urged us with a smile to celebrate diversity, not to be afraid to be curious, and to find out more about who people are and what matters to them.
The basis for removing a child from his or her parents: the Black excess.
The afternoon session was opened by the well known academic and psychiatrist Dr Aggrey Burke, who raised a number of uncomfortable questions for participants to consider.
African Caribbean parents with mental health issues need far better support to look after their children to ensure they are not taken into care. Children taken into care often experience worse life chances, from increased truancy at school to higher levels of drug and alcohol use. As Dr Burke said, “to be looked after is often to be overlooked”. And black parents experiencing mental health issues gave eloquent testimony in the workshops of the power of their children to give them something to live for even in the middle of distress. So giving parents the support and respite they needed to look after their own children was often the best solution for all concerned.
Having a mental health diagnosis was a major risk factor in having one’s children taken away. In fact, a staggering 85% of parents in child protection court proceedings had a mental health diagnosis such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder or personality disorder. But undoubtedly, another risk factor was being black. This was partly a result of systemic racism within the wider society and issues of poverty and deprivation which were closely linked with being black.
Services meant to help also operated in an institutionally racist way. Part of the problem lay in lack of accurate cultural ‘translation’. Within Caribbean culture, strong language was used to refer to naughty children but when taken out of context by white practitioners this could be used as a justification for removing that child from its parents. And this was exacerbated by stereotypes of black people as inherently violent, which could lead to mistaking genuine anger for psychosis.
The lack of understanding, stigmatisation of and discrimination against black mental health service users from within black communities also needed to be challenged, including the strong pressure on black parents to cope without asking for help outside the black community.
Particularly in the workshops, the conference did not only focus on the negative, but also on good practice examples of what helped, such as residential facilities for black mothers, a genuine interest by practitioners in their patients, cross agency working with black voluntary organisations which could better understand the needs of black service users, and educating practitioners through the power of the stories of black parents themselves. These workshops will be written up by the scribes at SCIE and form the basis of the next newsletter for the Parental Mental Health and Child Welfare Network out this April.
Home | Privacy policy | Terms and conditions | Printer friendly
Site built by Net Efficiency Ltd