Limiting MH support to certain cultural areas?

[Mindcultural]

I have today received this message below from a mental health support service for young people.

AIBU to think it’s completely wrong to offer support based on cultural diversity and would like to know how they decide who fits this criteria?

Hi,

I’m getting touch as you have recently made a referral to our Youth In Mind services on behalf of a child or young person.

Unfortunately, we are having to reduce the size of the team for funding reasons, so we now only have funding to support young people from culturally diverse communities, if this is relevant for the individual you referred to us, please can I ask that you complete this form forms.office.com and we will be back in touch accordingly.

If we are now no longer able to offer support to the individual you have made a referral for, please accept our apologies for this. Please feel free to keep an eye on our website for updated information regarding available services as we are always looking for new funding opportunities to allow us to reach more children and young people.

There's lots of research about this. I linked just a few above, as has another poster.
If you're interested, there is a lot to understand.

The MH crisis in the autism community, high suicide rate and abuse in inpatient isn’t discussed either. It doesn’t choose skin colour but I guess white autistic kids just don’t matter.

I’m interested in why this is seemingly ok, but would absolutely not be ok, for a donor to specify that funds should only be spent on while children. It wouldn’t happen and shouldn’t happen.

Other children not accessing support doesn’t change the woeful MH support that was previously open to all children but now excludes a good number of children in need.

They would qualify as culturally diverse.

Its obviously massively complicated, but some factors are with where services are, the way that messaging and information about services can be subtly weighted towards certain groups at the expense of others, and basically every experience from "authority" that people have had. Every interaction can build trust in services or undermine it. So you may find people less willing to even consider access, assuming they can get to services in the first place.

The majority of children in England should have access to mental health support via schools in the form of the mental health silllrt team, MHST. This is jointly funded by nhs and education England and offers tier 2 support to children aged 5-18. The service is expanding and has been running since 2019 in some areas. Support is delivered by specialist practitioners trained to post grad level. It is designed to be early intervention and offer support fairly rapidly and have quite short waiting lists. Schools are often quite poor at sharing information about it, but should refer to the service and many offer self referral too.

Despite being fairly open access (symptom and severity dependent and in some cases only in specific schools) the uptake from certain sectors is very, very low.

Strange you say that, I’ve found it to be a pretty constant part of societal conversation for more than 10 years.

my friends with suicidal usually trans autistic white children are completely clueless about middle aged schizophrenic black men though, I doubt they have given the possibility a seconds thought.

That’s not credible at all …the black mothers are dying because of racism…that is the purpose the charity would want to have as a charitable mission to heal. Much as in this case severe MH difficulties is much more prevalent in culturally diverse communities BECAUSE they are disadvantaged….but still your preference would be to take from scarce resources to help the most in need for a group tha5 can fa4 easier access mainstream services??

I'm sure it will be because like most mental health services they currently have a vastly unrepresented amount of clients from certain demographics/population and so the limited resources they have will be being put into trying to 'even that out'. But you'll think what you will.

Top 5 items (year to April 24).

22% in work and out of work welfare
20% health
11.5% State Pension
11% debt interest
10% education

That's 75% of the total, so if you want to increase spending on Healthcare, you either need to raise taxes, cut one of welfare, pensions, or education drastically, or for a quick fix, borrow more.

I work in children's mental health. I know that there is a huge problem. But if you think that mental health support is pretty much non existent for white British children, who are over-represented in services, then imagine what it must be like for the under-represented.

They’re not funded by donations though are they? They’re not what you collected doing an office cake sale or running a Marathon or setting up a monthly direct debit. They’re grants.

Or be treated with respect in the referral process…..to even get onto a wait list

Except writing to the press would do exactly that, wouldn’t it? Bring more attention to this issue, from people with no knowledge of the issue, and how charity funding and contracts work? Drive more people to Reform? Unless that’s what you want, of course….

Yes, I agree. Some people from minority ethnic communities are economically privileged. The last Tory cabinet comes to mind.

Some white people are very underprivileged, in particular white working class.

These organisations should look at overall privilege. Ethnicity is too blunt a tool. It would be better if they targeted their services at those in the most need.

This with bells on.

They will keep pretending they haven’t seen this, Vivienne.

Good luck getting any CAMHS services anywhere, the ones I have been in contact with turn away many many people because of lack of capacity.

My ds is culturally diverse but doesn't look it. I would just apply. What are they going to do? DNA test? Measure his cranium? Straight up tell me that he isn't brown enough?

The funding is for those on the fringes of society, so economically affluent BAME people are not recipients of the charity’s help.

If I wanted to drive people to Reform I would not have put unfortunately would I? I despise Reform. Read more carefully.

So you would be happy for this charity to prioritise white British children if that matched their beliefs or are beliefs meant to be in one direction only?

So imagine how much worse it is for BAME people.

What's a "culturally diverse community"? \

If he is, then he would get the support. There's no testing (which I think you know). You tick the box as you would on any form. There has to be some trust that people won't take advantage of a service that is trying to redress an inequality.

Yeah exactly this and I think made much worse because SMI is very unpalatable to social media. Theres not endless reels, talk of self care or a nice recovery arc and I say that as someone who really struggles with my mental health and is multiply medicated and recieving input from services after many years of nothing but I can still recognise I am very privileged to not fall into this vastly overlooked and often meligned group of people who mostly only get anything at all once they are on a locked ward in first instance.