Company registered as "The Health Forum".

Company Number: 8013774.Registered Charity Number 1151980

The Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) Health Forum

Introduction

The BME Health Forum is a unique and well-established partnershipbetween voluntary and community organisations, healthcare providers, commissioners,and local authorities. It improves the quality of health and social care services for patients from deprived backgrounds living primarily in Westminster, Kensington & Chelsea and Hammersmith & Fulham.

The BME Health Forum empowers marginalised patients and communities to engage and influence local health care provision. It provides a way for health professionals, and commissioners to listen to the health needs of marginalised patients and make improvements to health services.

The BME Health Forum was first established in 2002 when it was located within Westminster Primary Care Trust. In 2011, after changes in legislation with regard to Primary Care Trusts, the BME Health Forum became an independent body. It was incorporated into a limited company in 2012 and was registered with the Charity Commission in 2013.

BME Health Forum Aims

  • Reduce health inequalities for people from deprived communities
  • Improve health and wellbeing outcomes for people from deprived communities
  • Ensure that health and social care policies and service development are informed by the views of local communities

BME Health Forum Objectives

  • Remove barriers to accessing health and social care for people from deprived communities both directly and indirectly by engaging with health and social care policy makers and service providers, community organisations and individuals, improving links and communication and raising awareness.
  • Research, scrutinise and influence strategic policy issues and initiatives within the health and social care services to ensure that policy makers are aware of the impact on deprived communities of any decisions made.
  • Support communities and organisations to voice their health concerns, bringing these to the attention of commissioners and providers and ensuring that they are taken into account in the planning, commissioning and delivery of services.
  • Support the voluntary and community sector in the delivery of health, social care and wellbeing projects by a variety of strategies including commissioning, providing skills and information, demonstrating value and raising concerns to the relevant statutory sector bodies.

Governance

The BME Health Forum is governed by 7 trustees including 3 trustees who are nominated by local BME groups. Current trustees are:

Chair: Eddie Chan, Director of Chinese National Healthy Living Centre

Treasurer: Brian Colman, independent equalities expert

Trustee: Bilal El-Harras, Senior Advocate, Advocate for Mental Health

Trustee: Filsan Ali, Midaye Somali Development Network

Trustee: Cllr Judith Blakeman, Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea

Trustee: Sylwia Lemanska, Migrants Resource Centre

Trustee: Ambra Caruso, Healthwatch, Wandsworth

The BME Health Forum is advised by an advisory group of 11 members, membership of which comes from the local NHS, the local authorities and the voluntary and community sector. The advisory group and trustees meet quarterly in a joint meeting. Trustees also meet quarterly in a separate meeting.

The organisations represented on the advisory group are:

Chelsea and Westminster NHS Foundation Trust

Central London Community Healthcare NHS Trust

Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust

Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust

Kensington & Chelsea Social Council

Paddington Development Trust

Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea

SPM Agape

Tri Borough Public Health

Funding

The funding for the BME Health Forum is as follows:

  • Core funding from Central London Clinical Commissioning Group and West London Clinical Commissioning Group.
  • Funding for the Unscheduled Care Project from Central London Clinical Commissioning Group
  • Funding for the West London Engagement Project from Kensington & Chelsea Social Council

Core Activities & Projects

The BME Health Forum’s core activities are:

  • Disseminating information about services, events, consultations, jobs, funding, and changes in policy or legislation by email to 500 recipients
  • Holding 4 public meetings per year that promote two way communication between the NHS and the voluntary and community sector
  • Maintaining a website with up to date information about health and wellbeing services, events and employment opportunities of interest to local residents and to those who work in this field.
  • Facilitating and taking part in formal and informal consultations that contribute to improved understanding of statutory providers and commissioners of the needs of the local population
  • Providing advice and support to community organisations and individuals about how to engage with the NHS, and supporting NHS commissioners and providers to successfully communicate and engage with local providers, users and patients.

The BME Health Forum’s current projects are:

Unscheduled Care

This project is about gathering insight into the patterns of unscheduled care in deprived communities. This means finding out why people from deprived communities use A&E services frequently and why some people receive hospital care in an unplanned way. To achieve this, we have trained local volunteers to interview 125 local people who either have long terms conditions and/or use A&E services frequently. This information will be fed back to commissioners and providers together with recommendations with the aim of improving care for people from deprived communities.

To find out more please go to our website:

Multilingual Mental Wellbeing Project

This project supports people from BME communities who are going through an emotionally difficult period in their lives but who are not mental health service users.

The BME Health Forum has trained bilingual volunteers from the 4 community organisations to offer mental wellbeing sessions (including listening in a non-judgmental way, offering information, support and advocacy and making appropriate referrals). Volunteers are managed by their organisations and offered independent supervision also. Sessions are offered in 9 different languages as well as English.

To find out more please go to our website:

West London CCG Engagement programme

Kensington & Chelsea Social Council (KCSC) has been awarded funding from West London Clinical Commissioning Group (WLCCG) to deliver an engagement programme across Kensington and Chelsea, Queen’s Park and Paddington. The programme aims to support WLCCG with its ambition of improving the quality of primary and community care while reducing the cost of acute care.

KCSC is working in partnership with the BME Health Forum, The Migrants and Refugees Communities Forum and Healthwatch Central West London to deliver an engagement programme that will build on WLCCG’s ‘Out of Hospital’ Strategy.

To find out more please go to our website:

Maternity

During this project the BME Health Forum followed the journeys of ten BME pregnant women accessing care at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust. For a full copy of the report please visit our website:

Actions following the report’s recommendations are still being followed up by the BME Health Forum and by the Maternity Services Liaison Committee (the service users’ forum).