Navigating the journey into adulthood is tough. Unfortunately, for many young people, this journey is made even tougher by unfair barriers, experiences of discrimination and systems that fail to meet their needs. For Black and young people of colour, these injustices manifest not only as part of everyday life in the UK, but also within the systems and services that are supposed to be supporting them.
We wanted to go beyond the statistics to illustrate the specific challenges faced by this community and then understand the approaches most valued by Black young people and the professionals supporting them, to help others in addressing and dismantling racial inequities in therapeutic support.
This co-production project brings together learning from four organisations which work specifically with young people of Black heritage, as well as the young people they serve.
This research intends to form an evidence base and an impetus for action. Young people are hungry for change, and the professionals supporting them are tired of working within and against systems that are failing to meet their needs.
Report contents
Deep Roots to Rotten Fruits: exploring racial inequity in therapeutic services
Fertile Ground: what’s working and what needs nurturing
Tending Change: commitments and recommendations to cultivate racial justice in youth counselling
In summary
The issues of poor access and experience for Black and racialised young people in mental health services are deeply rooted. To unpick and address the injustices stemming from hundreds of years of embedded racism, we need to do more than simply promoting inclusion into a status quo that was never built to serve Black people. We must radically rethink our approaches.
At the root, we will need to interrogate our assumptions and ‘business as usual’. We will need to consistently ask how we centre the principles of justice, equality, decoloniality, and collectivism, avoiding the pitfalls of unintentionally defaulting to oppressive norms.
At the core, we will need to embed systemic approaches which cater to each young person as a whole, multifaceted individual, operating within a specific social, political and cultural context.
The fruits of our labour will be seen through continual system improvement. This will be cultivated through a practice of deeper cultural attunement and true cultural representation, not just across the workforce, but within therapeutic approaches and even our ideas of ‘wellbeing’ and ‘illness’. We won’t be leaving the heavy lifting to a ‘diverse staff team’, but taking responsibility, each and every one of us, for cultivating a deeply embodied respect for the humanity, intellect and beauty of African-diaspora people.
Dig deeper into what it means to work for racial equity in youth counselling
