A More Effective Service for Black Men with a Serious Mental Illness: Perspectives of clinical and non-clinical professionals in Lambeth

Healthwatch Lambeth heard from 11 clinical and non-clinical professionals from a broad range of roles across health, care, and community settings through an open-ended survey. The aim was to understand their experiences of working with Black men with SMI in Lambeth and what helps and hinders their ability to provide effective and inclusive support.

Key findings

Professionals described how person-centred communication, empathy and continuity and cultural understanding enable men to feel heard, respected and engaged with their care. When these are missing, mistrust and disengagement increase. Deep-rooted distrust, shaped by inequality and stigma, continues to affect access to care. 

Professionals emphasised that recovery is not achieved through medication alone but through approaches that recognise the importance of social connections and providing a sense of identity and belonging. Opportunities for skills building, employment, and community participation were seen as vital to restoring hope and confidence. 

Professionals identified challenges to providing fair and effective care, including limited access to specialist and talking therapies, a lack of joined-up working, poor information sharing across services, professional shortages, and a lack of sustained funding for community services. Gaps in ethnicity data further limited their ability to identify and follow-up with those at most risk of disengaging from services.

Implications for service development

To address these issues, professionals called for:

• Improved communication, collaboration, coordination and support across services to maintain continuity and follow up.
• A single point of contact within a GP surgery as a way of getting to know and understand Black men’s needs and enable better continuity of care.
• Culturally competent and person-centred care, with empathy, respect, and an understanding of the impact of racism, inequality and cultural identity on experiences.
• Investment in local community-based and peer-led models, including daily activities, vocational training, safe spaces, and opportunities to build belonging and tackle stigma around mental health.
• Stable funding and capacity building to train, retain and recruit skilled professionals and evaluate effective practice.

As the insight in this report was provided by a small number of people, we cannot assume that it is reflective of all professionals. However, the findings align with existing research underscoring these challenges, as well as with the insight provided by Black male service users in our report ‘A Fulfilling Life, What Matters to Me’ and Black unpaid carers in our report “Time for Our Ethnic Voices”.

Read the full report below.