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.

Yes, what a surprise OP hasn’t started a thread in anger about the shitty service black mothers receive. There’s a shocker.

A BAME NT young person who hasn’t experienced abuse and trauma is not more in need than a white, ND or gay young person who has experienced trauma or abuse.

The latter will be now excluded and that is absolutely not ok.

I can assure you that ALL mental health support is meagre. It is not specific to BAME kids.

That isn’t quite the same though. A better example would be setting up a charity for all children whose mothers died in childbirth and later down the line restricting it by ethnicity or culture.

If such a charity excluded black children whose mothers died in childbirth because they could only get funding for white culturally excluded groups, I would expect a huge uproar.

No I’m saying any kid in dire need should benefit regardless of colour.

You’re claiming that you have an issue with any charity or charity funding stream being aimed at any specific cause, but you’re not, you’re happy for charities to be aimed at what you want in them as long as it’s only to your benefit and not others.

There are clearly several charities aimed at neurodiverse mental health, you seem fine with them existing your only issue is their reach doesn’t go far enough. But when the funding is aimed at another subsection of society you have a massive issue with equal access.

Should I be annoyed the Autistic Society or the Tourette’s society aren’t directing their resources to me?

And a society can only be culturally diverse if it's actually diverse... If they're excluding one type of person who lives in the 'culturally diverse area' .. well that does sound wonky.

That isn’t correct there are many NHS projects for specific need and communities

You’d like children’s services to start accepting adults? Gynae services to start caring for penile disfunction?

This project is funded by 3 other charities to Mind to do this specific work ..where greatest need is located

Seriously? BAME NT young people without trauma and abuse are not the target for this charity!

How do you not get this?

Over and over again the data shows that BAME clients are much less likely to be offered or to access MH services. This privately given grant is to address this.

What is not ok is that funding to MH is so fucked up that anyone is excluded. But it is not this charities fault nor that of the grant giver. They can give whatever money they want for whatever they want.

If you are so up in arms, so something about it.

But it is even more meagre for BAME kids because they face more barriers to getting support than white kids. Did you even read the links I posted?

The NAS offers its resources to anyone but it’s just a reference charity that educates. It doesn’t even run a phone help line anymore. It’s not the same. Vulnerable young people need counselling, groups etc and it should be based on need- end of.

It has been repeatedly explained that charities rely on sponsors, and sponsors can have stipulations on how they want their donations are spent.

Charities need to adapt or close.

What you’re saying is if the charity can’t centre white kids, it should close.

It’s not NHS funding, it’s a private grant which is why their general referrals are closed and only on specific scheme is open. Hope that helps.

The specific private funding was in response to a white paper carried out by the charity in the area identifying a greater need within certain areas of cultural diversity in their local area. So it seems like the funding was a literal attempt at addressing the discrimination and yet you have an issue with it.

The referral form states that they are closed to referrals due to the number of referrals they have. Mental health charities regularly close to new referrals due to high demand, it would be unsafe to have people waiting for an assessment with no support. They are signposting to other services and they can’t do much more than that. They’ve got availability / funding for certain projects it seems, but the trauma pathway is closed due to demand.

The focus of the area that is closed is trauma, which is a real shame but having trained practitioners and carrying out high quality assessments and interventions is time consuming.

Would they? Doesn't coming from a "racially, culturally or ethnically diverse background" mean children who are mixed race or whose parents are of different cultures or ethnicities? Traveller children who have 2 traveller parents don't have a diverse background do they? But a child with one traveller parent and one non traveller parent would. As would a child with a Scottish parent and Greek parent, or a child with a Nigerian parent and a Japanese parent. If that isn't what the charity means they need to reword it to make it clear what they do mean.

The project hosted by the major charity lists the grant funders and the work they’ve agreed to do ….with culturally diverse community youngsters

Over and over again BAME young people shouldn’t be leap frogging over white kids with higher need because of skin colour which is what will happen.

I can’t do anything about it as my time is taken up trying to keep very ill children alive with zero support or resources.

No if the charity can’t take all kids and focus on need it should close.

Not at all - you can check my posting history, I'm constantly pushing for everything possible to save us from Reform.

It's charities like this and similar discrimination against white British /middle class etc which push certain groups to vote for Reform.

And no, I don't want to make things better for actors like this. Inclusion means inclusion.

It's a well know fact that white working class boys have the worst educational outcomes of all groups in Britain. I remember there were some news when a wealthy donor offered to sponsor private school bursary for two white boys from poor working class backgrounds. There was an outcry of "racial discrimination" and school rejected this. Funny that it's ok the other way around.

Giving BAME equal access to services on the whole is not them leap frogging over white kids.

Even the fact that you keep bringing up “white kids” when many recipients of this funding could still be white shows your real agenda.

Where exactly did I even hint that if it doesn’t centre white kids the charity should close? I was clarifying the rather inadequate example
given by another poster. I think you’ve just leapt to the moon.

So what about charities that serve mainly white people? Shall we close them too?

Ironically the university of Bradford, where OP is, offers a bursary to white working class boys.
Inclusion means inclusion so I assume you take great issue with this initiate and think it should be stopped?

This is what happens when you form your opinions from a few frothing posts in the GB news comment section. Your take on things isn’t actually grounded in reality.

If they previously were able to offer a service to all young people, but now have had to restrict that it’s possible that they have a grant that is specifically funding ‘diverse communities’ but that other grants have been cut. Funding for services often has to be patched together from a variety of different funds.