Background

Across England, ethnically and culturally diverse groups face barriers to access mental health services. Alongside this they often do not have experiences or outcomes that match the wider population. Due to this it has been recognised that greater transparency and accountability is required in the mental health sector to eliminate race inequalities.

  • What is PCREF?

    NHS England has launched its first ever anti-racism framework: the Patient and carer race equality framework (PCREF).

    This mandatory framework is for all NHS mental health trusts and mental health service providers, such as Vita Health Group, to embed. This must be completed by the end of the 2024/25 financial year.

    PCREF will support Vita Health Group on our journey to becoming an actively anti-racist organisation, by ensuring that we responsibly co-produce and implement tangible and impactful actions to reduce racial inequalities within our services.

  • What will PCREF focus on?

    The PCREF will support improvement in three main domains. These are listed below alongside actions well be taking within each domain.

    Leadership and governance

    • Nominate an executive board lead and establish governance structures, accountability and leadership across the organisation.
    • Co-develop, implement and review local PCREF plans with racialised communities and your workforce.
    • Identify priorities for improvement in meeting the specific legislative and regulatory requirements relating to equalities to include in local PCREF plans.
    • Monitor core measures at Trust Board level on a regular basis and publish PCREF plans.

     

    National organisational competencies

    • Engage with racialised communities to identify and agree core organisational competencies.
    • Agree on measurable and practical actions to co- develop in local PCREF plans.
    • Ensure the whole organisation is aware of its responsibilities in implementing local PCREF plans.

     

    Patient and carer feedback mechanism

    • Ensure patient experience data is used, monitored and flowed to national data-sets to enable bench- marking, lesson-sharing and service improvement.
    • Ensure outcome measures are routinely used and monitored locally, and flowed to national datasets to enable benchmarking, lesson-sharing and improvement of services.
    • Agree approaches for implementing a ‘real time’ and transparent feedback loop for racialised and ethnically and culturally diverse communities.
  • Vita Health Group’s commitment to PCREF

    Vita Health Group recognises the importance of PCREF as a much needed tool to drive change in sector of health where sadly health inequalities are far too common. Vita Health Group is committed to implementing and embedding PCREF in a manned that is consistent with both its intent and spirit.

    We hope to play our part in bringing about positive change.

  • What have we done so far?

    We have established a PCREF Project Team which is chaired by a member of the executive management team and have a plan in place to ensure we can implement PCREF by the outlined deadline.

    We are reaching out to community partners and service users to involve them in engagement and co-production activities.

    There are various elements of our existing work that will feed into our PCREF plans, they include but aren’t limited to our:

    • Annual Equality Delivery System reporting
    • Annual Workforce Race Equality Standard (WRES) and Workforce Disability Equality Standard (WDES) evaluations
    • Engagement with our colleague Race Equality Network
    • Partnership Liaison Officer Team engagement with local communities
    • Ethnicity Champions
  • How can you get involved?

    If you are a service user or Voluntary, Community, and Social Enterprise (VCSE) and would like to get involved, please ‘Contact Us’ following this link: Contact Us – Vita Health Group and select ‘NHS’ ‘ Mental Health Services’ and select your service area. Please proceed to complete the rest of the form. You do not need to enter an NHS number.

    In the enquires free text box please let us know that you would like to be involved in our ‘ community listening groups’.

Upcoming Events

Date and time: TBC

Region: TBC

Location: TBC

Other resources

For more information on PCREF see: NHS England » Patient and carer race equality framework

For more information on Equality, Diversity and Inclusion at Vita Health Group see: Vita Health Groups commitment to Equity, Diversity and Inclusion

Vita is an award-winning, CQC registered healthcare provider