Commissioning and providing mental health advocacy for African and Caribbean men
Organisational arrangements - Black and minority ethnic mental health advocacy
Type: Stand-alone organisation
Strengths:
- Wider BME rather than specifically African and Caribbean focus may serve to promote broader commonalities of experience, and hence solidarity.
Weaknesses:
- The sense of shared cultural identity may be somewhat diluted.
- Unless the workforce adequately reflects the prospective clients’ breadth of cultural perspectives, the service may not meet the needs of specific groups.
Type: As part of a BME mental health service
Strengths:
- As above.
- Similar advantages to co-location with other mental health functions for African and Caribbean mental health services.
- The potential exists to bring in some wider cultural perspectives on alternative services (such as eastern philosophies and complementary medicines) to complement African and Caribbean cultures.
Weaknesses:
- As above.
- There are relatively few such organisations in the broader picture of national mental health services, and those that do exist are often under-resourced or facing insecure futures.
- Separate services are in and of themselves a barrier to a more inclusive mainstream service.
Type: As part of a mental health advocacy service
Strengths:
- Capacity – and potentially choices – increased through access to a broader pool of advocates.
Weaknesses:
Profile within – and consequently ownership by – the community may be weaker.
Next in this section: Mental health advocacy
