title: Enhancing pathways & mental healthcare for BME groups: learning between the ideological and operational.
abstract: Improving pathways to care is one of the aims of the Department of Health's plan for improving mental health services for black and minority ethnic (BME) groups. However, service providers have not been supplied with the information and advice on how to improve routes into and through their services for ethnic minorities. The Enhancing Pathways Into Care (EPIC) project provided four clinical teams and mental health providers a process of focused consultancy and a collaborative learning network in order to evolve pathways to recovery. This paper documents the project implementation between January 2006 and March 2007. We report here the key lessons about recruiting innovative and gifted sites to this programme, and the benefits in terms of team development, understanding leadership and operational delivery of a vision. Three of the four sites completed an evaluation consisting of a race equality impact assessment. The project revealed that keys to success include a reflective use of team strengths, engagement of stakeholders from boardroom to clinical teams, transformational leadership, transmission of leadership to more appropriate leaders for different stages of the project, a reflective learning style that permits obstacles to be embraced and managed, and cycles of movement between 'ideological' and 'operational' phases of the project.
authors.affiliation: Centre for Health Improvement in Ethnic Services (CHIMES) at Centre for Psychiatry at the Wolfson Institute of Preventive Medicine Barts and The London School of Medicine & Dentistry Queen Mary University of London, UK.
authors.forename: Joanne
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Moffat
authors.forename: Bernd
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Sass
authors.forename: Kwame
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: McKenzie
authors.forename: Kamaldeep
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Bhui
mesh_terms: D044383:Black People; D019091:Critical Pathways / Q000592:standards; D003695:Delivery of Health Care; D005006:Ethnicity; D006801:Humans; D008603:Mental Health; D008605:Mental Health Services; D008913:Minority Groups; D054525:Minority Health / Q000208:ethnology*; D010348:Patient Care Team; D015397:Program Evaluation / Q000379:methods