Healing our Broken Village conference 2024 | Latest News

Last week I, along with colleagues and members of our community, attended Healing our Broken Village – the 16th annual Black Mental Health Conference. The conference overall marked a positive development in how we work together for our community.

I thought hard about what to say in my opening address. We want to see a step change in how we work in collaboration with our community to address racial inequity in mental health. Below are the words I shared, to which I remain committed.

In the past, these conferences have at times been difficult and adversarial for many of us. I recognised this in my address and said that this work is too important to walk away from. I stand by this. I also said that I would be more straightforward, accepting the hard truths, and challenging hard untruths, which impact on whether people trust our mental health services.

During the conference one of the speakers stated as fact that the Trust is not making progress in key areas. This wasn’t accurate – in fact, members of staff who are progressing this work were in attendance.

I raised my hand to correct this, but I was not acknowledged. So Billy, our Chief Medical Officer, challenged the statement.

While it was important that we corrected the statement, we openly recognise that there were better and more appropriate ways we could have done this. We responded in the moment and probably too emotionally, because of the importance of this work and our previous experiences at this conference.

I want to thank the attendees who spoke eloquently and passionately about the different impacts this had on them. We heard that some felt that we silenced a Brown voice and used our white privilege - and that this had echoed past experiences. As I said at the conference, I am sincerely sorry for this, as is Billy. We have learnt a great deal from a decision that was made in the moment. If we could turn back the clock and relive that moment, we would have challenged the contribution in a different way.

We also heard from our Black and Brown staff about the importance of acknowledging their work and for them to be treated with respect in this forum. It's a difficult balance, making sure we recognise the hard work and the improvements we’re making together, while also recognising the fact that we have to do more, and more quickly, to address race inequity.

We have held a reflective session with staff who were in attendance, and it is based on this session and communications with key community partners (like Pastor Andrew) that I write this note. I am also looking forward to a further reflective session with the leaders of the Community Empowerment Network and the ICS to make sure that we all continue to work in partnership together, listening to the diverse voices of our communities and think about what next for our partnership and conference.

My opening words and commitments at Healing our Broken Village 2024

Partnership

• I recognise the importance of this event: Healing our Broken Village has more resonance than ever before. I know we have people here – including members of staff – who were here at the very first event 16 years ago.
• Our last event in June was difficult for many of us: We also had members of the community acknowledging the importance of change, and how we need to hear and respect different leadership voices.
• This work is too important to walk away from: Which is why I’m here today, and I’ve encouraged our staff to be here.
• Mark Creelman (on behalf of the ICS), Malik and I have committed to making sure that our partnership works. And that we will all live by our joint values, for the good of all of the communities we serve.
• I am very aware that institutional power, finances and white privilege is located in trusts like ours – so it’s important that I commit to upholding our joint values and ground rules 101%.
• During previous events, some hard truths and some hard untruths (facts that were not correct) have been spoken. As an NHS organisation, we will rarely correct untruths in public. This will be different going forward. We want to be straightforward. We expect the same of our partners. With one goal, to make things better for the Black and Brown communities we serve.
• I am hopeful that this evening will demonstrate a clear step change for all of us in this partnership.

Racism

• We live in a society that is still ingrained with racism, despite recent social change.
• The impact of racism (including religious intolerance like Islamophobia and antisemitism), on people from many of our communities increases rates of mental ill-health.
• During the summer riots, we had patients and members of staff telling us they were afraid to go home, or that the stories they’d read had reignited their own incidents of racist trauma.
• We also know that structural racism means that our services are traditionally designed for the majority white population and that some communities have too little access to services, whereas others experience unnecessary coercion. Even though our staff base is incredibly diverse.
• We are changing this. And we know that it’s slow. Too slow.

Racism and mental health locally

• We cannot change society – but we can change what is in our control.
• We are seeing important improvements to access rates amongst our Black population – for example our Black communities have higher access to talking therapies than their population size. This is important. However our Asian communities have lower access rates – there is work to do.
• And we also know that once in our services, Black and Brown communities experience poorer outcomes and experience. That same structural racism in our society is at play within our services.
• We are challenging this in a number of ways, with better advocacy for Black and Brown communities, which is reducing restrictive practice in our wards, services that are actively reaching out to our population, and developing a culturally curious workforce.
• And we know we need to do more.

Our organisation is changing

• We know that we can’t make these changes without changing the fabric of our organisation.
• We are an example of snowy white peaks. And that is changing. The top of our organisation looks very different now, it is more diverse, it is more representative of our staff and patients.
• We have made strong statements that racism doesn’t belong here, adopted new active anti-racism values, developed new fair recruitment and fair career progression practices, created new and diverse decision-making groups at the top of our organisation
• These changes are making a difference. Our workforce is telling us that we are more respectful of diversity and difference, and we have seen our vacancy rate drop by 25% and our turnover rate plummet too.
• When I welcome every new member of staff, I tell them that unless they are on board with our active anti-racism journey, we might not be the right organisation for them. I have also given this message to our leaders.

Services in the community

• Wandsworth (and SWL) has had the most unique investment opportunity in the last 140 years. I want to invite you all to visit Springfield Village. It’s just around the corner from here. We’ve built a village with mental health at its heart. A village that breaks down stigma. We are building 1200 new houses, and recently went to battle to make sure that 400 new homes were 50% affordable, and 50% of those are affordable rents.
• We’ve built a 32-acre park, village square, shops and services. And at the centre are our mental health services.
• Our new wards, which are staffed by a global majority workforce with a highly diverse patient population, have seen a 36% reduction in incidents.
• We have the opportunity, with the anti-stigma / anchor agenda to do something really exciting and build on this.
• This is also why our EMHIP hubs are such important services – they’re seeing real successes, supporting those who would never use traditional mental health services.
• We are investing in our community services, that are culturally thoughtful and are closer to home.
• And the EMHIP partnership with CEN and the ICS is developing with greater clarity about who is best placed to deliver the different interventions.
• SWLSTG has underwritten all of the finances for EMHIP to secure delivery and change for our community. We will continue to do this as long as we are seeing positive change. That is my commitment.
• And this is the direction of travel from the government in their 10-year plan - and you have my commitment to advocate wholeheartedly for this community based on what we hear tonight.

Close

• I would like to walk away from this conference with more voices heard, with commitments from the community about how you want to be involved, and a real sense that we are in this together.
• We have much to be proud of. And I want to acknowledge the hurt and the pain of the past (everything I don’t experience as a white woman). And for us to move forward optimistically (and not naively) together.
• Recognise we need to do things differently: We know that we won’t see progress without a change in the way we work. We can’t just keep doing the same things, and expecting different results.
• For example, building a partnership with voluntary sector and building our alliance: The voluntary sector plays a crucial role in addressing health inequalities and racism by providing support, advocacy, and outreach to underserved communities. I want to work in partnership with all of you.
• We are not complacent – but let’s take a moment to recognise successes, and also that challenges still exist: We are making small progress and there is a long way to go.

Vanessa Ford

Chief Executive Officer