PARLIAMENTARY WRITTEN QUESTION
Mental Health Services: Ethnic Groups (25 June 2014)

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, if he will assess the effectiveness of the implementation of the conclusions of Delivering race equality in mental health care: An action plan for reform inside and outside services published in 2005; what his Department's strategy is for reducing inequalities in Black and minority ethnic patients' access to, experience of, and outcomes from mental health services; and if he will make a statement.

Asked by:
Ms Diane Abbott (Labour)

The Delivering Race Equality in mental health care programme, a five-year Department of Health programme launched in January 2005, was developed to address inequalities in patient admission, detention and experience of services.

The 2010 document Race Equality Action Plan: A five-year review looks back at the work of the Delivering Race Equality in mental health care programme and describes some of the key challenges, successes and learning. A copy of Race Equality Action Plan has been placed in the Library.

Our mental health Strategy, No Health Without Mental Health states that the Race Equality Action Plan provides a strong base from which commissioners and service providers can make improvements. These will rely on:

- local collection and monitoring of information on ethnicity and culture;

- better use of these data to inform commissioning and provision in health and social care;

- a focus on outcomes that work for individuals and communities;

- monitoring and evaluating effectiveness of service delivery, especially around equality needs; and

- establishing mechanisms that allow local user groups to engage with providers and commissioners, and that empower and support them so that they can engage effectively.

Additionally, our new mental health action plan, Closing the Gap sets out our priorities for essential change in mental health: 25 areas where people can expect to see and experience the fastest changes. The fourth priority is that we will tackle inequalities around access to mental health services. We know that people from black and minority ethnic (BME) communities have to date been less likely to use psychological therapies.

Which is why we are working with the Race Equality Foundation and other stakeholders to try and understand why this is the case and to understand inequalities around access to other services. NHS England are also working with BME community leaders to encourage more people to use psychological therapies.

The Ministerial Working Group on Equality in Mental Health has been established to support the Mental Health Equality work-stream of the Mental Health Strategy programme. The group will report to the Mental Health Strategy Ministerial Advisory Group. This will help to ensure that equality issues directly inform strategy implementation and enable the Government to fulfil their duties under the Equality Act 2010 and the Human Rights Act.

Information on the number of open hospital spells, the number of occupied beds on a single day as a proxy for beds available, broken down by ethnicity is provided in the attached table.

Answered by:
Norman Lamb (Liberal Democrat)
2 July 2014