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.

So your saying charities can't evolve? Do you think this is realistic?

I'm not engaging with you. You have one tactic, which is to deliberately misread people's posts and lie about what they've said, in order to distract from their actual points. You are a dishonest person and it does no one any good to try to engage with you as you will simply lie and lie and lie until the original point is way in the distance.

I think that if you were set up as a charity for all women but you are only able to offer a service for women who have a certain skin colour or who face particular barriers (even if the reason is because you only have funding for a project restricted to that group and you don't have enough unrestricted funding to give a service to anyone else) then you probably aren't meeting your charitable objectives any more. If that went on for any length of time you would either need to radically rethink your funding sources or else change your charitable objectives to reflect what you were actually doing.

Plus there's the Equality Act. The availability of alternative services locally would be one of the factors that would come into play when considering whether your charity had been illegally discriminating. If you're the only game in town then yes that could be illegal discrimination if you're only offering a service to certain races and it doesn't necessarily make a difference which race - majority, minority, hard to reach, whatever.

I don't think you fully understand the purpose of 'services'. You seem to see them as a perk kindly bestowed on people who deserve it because they've 'made the effort'.
Services don't just exist to make peoples lives nicer. They exist to tackle social problems because its cheaper in the long run than not. This is why governments fund them. So if the local council is giving a charity money to target a certain group, it's almost always to minimise the cost of that group on other more expensive services. Where services exist targeted to socially excluded women, you can guarantee there's some sort of cost saving outcome expected such as less reliance of health services, fewer of that group unemployed etc.

Makes sense. Btw, I love your username - or rather, I love that book!

Okay, but that's not really what the post is about? Pp are saying that people can't access existing services, which is the point I was responding to.

Where did I say anything about effort or kindness? I think you might be reading through the lens of your ideology which adds in distortions to confirm your biases.

JustSomeWaferThinHam · Today 13:28

OnlyHope33 · Today 06:38

@Cucumberino

Simple question:
Do you think it’s right that any charity is allowed to choose who they provide services to based on race?

All charities will have some sort of funding to reach unrepresented groups or groups who require significant more need, whether that's age, race, gender, sexuality etc. As long as the evidence / data is there to represent it, yes I do.

Would you find it acceptable to have a white only kids football club on the grounds that PoC are over represented in football?

In short yes, if a football club had the data to suggest that white british children were being under represented or lacked the same opportunity as children from other ethnic backgrounds and they wanted to aim their football club to that particular demographic then that's absoloutely fine, why would I have a problem with it?

You said that a charity can't start of as one thing and become another.

That is saying charities can't evolve, which is unrealistic.

As to your insult to me, you repeatedly asked me yesterday to re-post links that I had already posted, which I found dishonest.

I'm not engaging with you. You have one tactic, which is to deliberately misread people's posts and lie about what they've said, in order to distract from their actual points. You are a dishonest person and it does no one any good to try to engage with you as you will simply lie and lie and lie until the original point is way in the distance.

Thank you for your armchair analysis. It made me smile. Particularly that you've managed to take my very pragmatic and completely unideologically based explanation of why many third sector services are funded and find a way to make that about what you imagine my personal views are.
People are saying some groups can't access services hence the need for targeting. You're saying too bad they should bin their culture and learn English if they want to recieve the service.
I'm pointing out to you that it's not all about them wanting to recieve the service. The government wants them to recieve it to save us all money. Hence why effort is put in to removing barriers.

But you've gone so far off the point being discussed? We're talking about a service for mentally ill children that is denying white children access to that service. I'm saying that that's not okay, and the argument that somehow Asian people are denied access to services because they don't choose to access them, even if that's true, does not mean it's okay to discriminate against white children.

And I mean, yes. Of course people who live here should speak the language. I wouldn't move to another country and expect to have all services offered to me in English. That would rightly be seen as wildly entitled.

Oh and it wasn't your explanation of funding that I described as ideological, but your inability to respond to my comment without putting words in my mouth. Apparently, you are not alone in this, but still.

Except Reform don't want to support anyone with a disability, especially mental health. But yes, they would probably use it for racist reasons.

Since we're repeating posts.

You said that a charity can't start of as one thing and become another.

That is saying charities can't evolve, which is unrealistic.

As to your insult to me, you repeatedly asked me yesterday to re-post links that I had already posted, which I found dishonest.

The word 'support' is bandied around. I have never had any support from any Government. Parties say 'support people back to work'. In my experience it has always been down to me to find a job.

Haa anyone had any of this mythical 'support'?

The charity is Leeds Mind, which is affiliated but separate to Mind.

No, your conclusion is wrong. Charities are permitted to direct services are groups with specified protected characteristics if that group experiences a disadvantage. So for example, if I run a charity that takes children to the beach, I can choose to only take visually impaired children on the June trip to the beach because those children face additional barriers in life.

This is some of the worst faux naivety and sea lioniing I've seen on MN.

You have to wonder what people get out of it.

You didn’t go to school then? Weren’t vaccinated or received any medical care? Don’t drive on roads? Never been prevented from being attacked by terrorists, never eaten food that has been prepared in line with hygiene standards?

How does any of that support the unemployed into work?

OK. Let's get back on point then. The charity in question exists to support children and young people of all ethnicities. 70% of children and young people in the UK are white. 30% are not. Yet 90% of the work of the charity was done for white children and young people. Does that sound to you like they're really excluding white people? Or that just possibly they have one referral stream/access route that's only open to other ethnicities? Because logically, if white children are being excluded, how has the chaity managed to do 90% of their work for them?

Their charitable objectives are published on the CC website. That is what they have to stick to. Which ‘governing documents’ have you seen that say it’s ok to exclude people from any service based on race?

We’d have to see the needs of the applicants to see whether anyone has been discriminated against, not the diversity statistics. Anyone can apply. Applicants should be treated equally.

It doesn’t - you said you’ve never had any support from government. You have.

What do you mean by ‘disproportionately white’?

Can you link to the data to back all of your long list of claims?

There seems to be a lot of liberal handwringing here that not enough culturally diverse people apply for services. I think that’s their issue. As if that’s the fault of the white middle classes…

Anyone can apply. Yet 90% of the people receiving the service were white, against a population that is 70% white. If anything that suggests a bias towards white people, surely?