My alphabetical journey

Collaboration – the workshop wholeheartedly identified collaboration as vital to overcome barriers to equity. The current administration is eager to show that it can see and heal the damage regarding competitive culture and Whiteness (see Culture; see Disparity; see Whiteness).

Co-production – The ladder analogy sets co-production as the pinnacle of engagement. However, we need lived experience from every stage from current client and carer feedback, through community engagement towards co-production with people having Lived Experience in research and training, in service design and delivery, in review and governance towards improvement (see Engagement).

Coffee – I started my speech about values with a mention that I needed enough coffee to speak quickly.  Given the context and the historical association of coffee with slavery, its current association with poverty and environmental harms, was that OK? (see Whiteness).

CTO – “Community Treatment Orders – (CTOs) should be scrapped in most cases because they are overused, overly restrictive and used starkly disproportionately for black and ethnic minority people.” They confer little or no benefit or social value. (see Report)

Culture – towards our goal to promote an equitable and accessible culture for staff, clients, carers and the wider community we need to develop communications that allow identification of inequality as well as positive moves to counter it that engage all our systems (See Disparity; see Flight).

Denzel Washington – can act with immense power, even with just his left hand in shot (see Flight)

Disparity – the inequitable outcomes resulting from disproportionate application of the Mental Health Act section process, treatments and CTOs that lack value for racialised and other minorities, avoidable with proper application of NHS principles and values of care (see Report)

Engagement – a method for creating productive relationships with people having lived experience, solving barriers and promoting collaboration through value-based work (see co-production)

Flight – film contrasts values of lying and ego with honesty and integrity “a meditation on excuses” exemplifying  “how we as humans are willing to overlook faults for questionable reasons” (see CTO)

Governance –our systems and data measures will need to move towards equity and away from Disparity. (see Disparity; see Whiteness)

PCREF – a practical framework emerging from the Mental Health Act review and Bill to counteract inequity, which mental Health Trusts will need to understand and implement to pass inspection.

Report – a committee report regarding the Mental Health Act Bill 2022, which will give statutory force to the PCREF and consequent development of organisational competence (see PCREF) 

Silo – a method of working in isolation from other organisations and the wider community (see CTO)

Wheel- reinvention of – successful engagement of lived experience towards quality and equality is already a reality in many health and social care services, including the secure estate, especially involving community organisations. (see Collaboration)

Whiteness – An attitude resulting in the creation of social systems that favour one racial identity and disfavour others, or that normalises a lack of awareness or insensitivity towards the experiences and cultures of racialised and other minorities (See CTO; see Disparity; see Silo)

Author: Eleanor Levy (Mental Health Advocate, Lived Experience Practitioner & member of MHA QI Delivery Team)