The winning team @ Black Students Project

If you are an African and interested in African issues in the Tees Valley area, here is the right place to start. Tees Valley Voices For Justice has secured a contract with the Department of Health through the University of Central Lancashire to deliver a one year intensive research to help improve mental health needs and experiences of mental health services for african men in the Tees Valley area.

We have now formed a strong team of 7 researchers who started work on June 9th. We already have 4 steering group members and need more people, especially from the African community to join us to share the view so that we can together deliver sustainable change to our community and improve people health.

This research form part of the Government response to the independent inquiry into the death of David Bennett, a 38-year-old African Caribbean patient, who died on 30 October 1998 in a medium secure psychiatric unit in Norwich after being restrained by staff for around 25 minutes. The report was published on the 12th February 2004 and can be seen in full here (pdf format).

Tees Valley Voices For Justice (TVVFJ)

Our task within this program is to research african men’s mental health needs and experiences of mental health and it is the task of mental health services to adequately respond to our findings particularly, with regard to how clinical services address access, experiences and outcomes for African men within the system.

Delivering Race equality is designed to deliver three key aims:

• Equality of access
• Equality of experience
• Equality of outcomes