Community Development Service

Primarily the eight largest BME communities in Leeds:

Also other BME groups, such as Azer-Turk, Kashmiri, Gypsy and Travelers

Anyone who is interested in improving the mental health and wellbeing of Black Minority Ethnic (BME) people in Leeds. For example:

We work best with groups of people, but if you feel you are on your own, we might help you to find other people who share your concerns.

We help other people to do just about anything that will improve the mental health of BME communities for example:

Promoting the strengths of the BME communities – not just talking about gaps, problems, needs and things that are bad
Demystifing mental health and wellbeing– cutting through the jargon and the name calling, and talking about real life as people feel it like this
Giving practical support to people to make improvements for themselves
Helping different religious groups feel more confident at helping people in mental distress
Supporting the growth and development of religious and cultural events that celebrate mental wellbeing
Helping services think through the ways they can help achieve equal outcomes for everyone
Lobbying decision makers and commissioners, and helping them to making sure services take their equality duties seriously
Our outcomes are set out in the Government Action Plan Delivering Race Equality

By being positive and solution focused – we believe that if you can see a problem you can help to find a solution
Helping all our partners make simple, positive changes in their communities
Finding shared ways to understand how we feel, and of what recovery means
Providing training and facilitation on mental health, ethnicity and the interplay between the two
Running information and awareness sessions for mental health services on things like:
    - Getting to know communities
    - Effective community engagement
    - The benefits of using asset based approaches
    - Mental health promotion within BME contexts
    - Thinking beyond accessible services
    - Building inclusive communities
    - Religion faith and belief
Running information and awareness sessions for community members on things like:
    - What mental health and well-being means
    - Understanding medicines and alternatives
    - How to get the right kind of help
    - Getting help with interpreters
    - How to influence the powers that be
    - Knowing how to complain effectively

The team speak seven languages fluently:

And we can get by in Arabic, French, and Gujerati.

We are very much in demand – people seem to like what we do
We use a variety of evaluation methods, depending on what we’re trying to do for example:
    - Case studies/written evaluations
    - Focus Groups
    - Community events and consultations
    - Feedback from the people we work with
We report our progress against our targets every 3 months to our Steering Group. You can download progress reports and papers.
We ask for direct feedback here.