As its last act the Commission for Racial Equality issued the Department of Health with a formal legal notice following concerns about ‘long-standing inequalities in the provision of health services’.
The dismay and anger about the Department’s lack of race equality impact assessment of the Mental Health Act is well documented. The CRE also criticised the lack of systematic ethnic monitoring of participants in the consultation when drawing up the health and social care White Paper Our Health Our Care Our Say and the Department’s decision not to carry out a full race quality impact assessment.
The CRE has been replaced by the new Commission for Equality and Human Rights headed by Trevor Phillips. That body will have to decide how far it wants to keep the spotlight on the Department of Health and whether to issue a compliance notice to the Department. That would require action to address deficiencies in the Department’s single equality scheme and require action for ethnic monoring and assessement of the impact of the Mental Health Act on minorities
The Department of Health commented that
"the report does not do justice to the range of measures we have in place to promote race equality in health and social care, such as our national programme for Delivering Race Equality in mental healthcare and our primary care Race for Health programme.”
SPN has also been critical of the Department’ s approach to race equality issues. The forthcoming study day ‘Whose recovery is it anyway’ will include hearing from African Caribbean men who are over-represented and disproportionately subject to control and restraint measures in the mental health system .
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