About PCREF
The Patient Carer Race Equality Framework (PCREF) is the patient and carer anti-racism equality framework and is NHS England’s first anti-racism framework. It aims to improve people’s experiences of mental health services, making them more racially inclusive and culturally appropriate.
PCREF helps NHS mental health Trusts and service providers to improve services for people from diverse ethnic, racial and cultural backgrounds. The PCREF is a partnership with local services, including the police and local authorities, as well as community and voluntary organisations, patients, service users, carers, families and communities. Our aim is to make sure diverse and minoritised communities are working together to make the PCREF part of standard practice for NHS Trusts.
Service users from racialised communities (and their families and carers) should feel more involved with the organisation and see opportunities to work in partnership to develop and review local PCREF plans. They will also feel that their voice is being heard, including with the Trust board of directors.
Service users will know that their experience is being listened to as the organisation will regularly look at data and review their feedback to help make continual improvements to services. They will know how to give feedback and will feel comfortable and confident to do so. Services will be better tailored to the needs of the community.
You can read more about PCREF through NHS England’s website
What does it mean for the Trust?
We recognise that people have different experiences depending on their race and background. The Trust is open about having conversations about race and inequalities and is working hard to address racism and racial inequality.
- All work across the Trust is underpinned by the Trust wide approach to equality and involvement, set out within the refreshed Equality and Involvement Strategy.
- This weaves throughout all our strategic aims, ambitions, and leadership priorities of living our values, making best use of resources and reducing health inequalities.
- PCREF is about improving access, outcomes and experiences for our diverse communities, aligning with our strategic objectives to enable people to reach their potential and live life to the full in their communities.
- PCREF cannot be done in isolation, but it’s also important to reflect that it plays just one part of our approach.
- The framework will align with pre-existing work taking place across the Trust to further amplify our commitment to being an anti-racist organisation and help reduce health inequalities.
PCREF is essential because it helps us address important health disparities, such as:
- Reducing restraints: Black individuals are more likely to be restrained in hospitals. We’re committed to changing this.
- Perinatal mental health: Black women experience significantly higher rates of mental distress during and after pregnancy. They are also less likely to seek support for these mental health challenges, which is why we are focusing on improving access to care and support for black mothers.
- Improving access: Some communities, like the traveller community, often struggle to access the health services they need. We’re working to remove these barriers.
- Enhancing recovery rates: Certain groups, like our local Muslim communities, have lower recovery rates for talking therapies, and we’re dedicated to improving these outcomes.
How we will deliver PCREF?
Leadership and governance
Our Trust’s board will be leading on establishing and monitoring plans of action to reduce health inequalities. Our director of strategy and change, Dawn Lawson, will lead our efforts to ensure that senior leaders guide and monitor how we reduce health inequalities. This involves setting clear goals, tracking our progress, and ensuring we are transparent and accountable in everything we do.
Organisational competencies
We’re committed to developing the skills and practices within our organisation to effectively address racial inequalities, this includes:
- Cultural awareness: Training our staff to understand and respect different cultural backgrounds.
- Inclusive practices: Ensuring that our policies and services are fair and accessible to everyone.
- Community collaboration: Working closely with local communities to develop solutions that work for them.
Our action plan 2025 – 2027
Read our PCREF action plan for 2025 – 2027.
Listening to feedback
We will be establishing visible and effective ways for patients and carers to feedback, as well as clear processes to act and report on that feedback. This will include getting your feedback in different ways, including focusing on community engagement, patient satisfaction surveys, focus groups, compliments and complaints.
PCREF implementation plan launch event – 3 April 2025
We were really pleased to launch the PCREF implementation plan at an event on Thursday 3 April at Fieldhead, attended by colleagues, partners, and members of our communities. The event brought together key stakeholders with the aim to share learning and facilitate understanding on how to improve people’s experiences of mental health services, ensuring better access, experiences, and outcomes for our racialised and marginalised communities.
The session featured presentations from NHS England national mental health equalities adviser Dr Jacqui Dyer on the national context of PCREF, and Zoe Reed from pilot site South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust about how the framework has been implemented.
Our equality and involvement team also shared our local approach and context, and reflected on people’s lived experience through our community voice. We also delivered our implementation plan, including priority areas and PCREF action plan, exploring the work already in progress to reduce health equalities and detailing the next steps of our journey to embed PCREF within our organisation and services.
To view the content covered during the launch event, download the PowerPoint or PDF.
Do you want to know more or get involved?
We want to know what is the most important to people. What would make the biggest difference to them feeling like services are helping them?
Your insights are vital to shaping the future of our services. We want to encourage our patients, service users, carers, families, community and voluntary organisations, governors, staff and members of the public to get involved with working in partnership to develop the PCREF.
If you or someone you care for has experienced any of these issues and comes from an ethnic/global majority background, we’d love to hear from you.
- Share your experience: Tell us about what’s happening and what needs to change by emailing involvingpeople@swyt.nhs.uk
- Get involved: Take part in our workshops, events, and meetings to help shape our direction. Lend your time and expertise to help us achieve our goals.
Contact us
You can contact the team via email at: involvingpeople@swyt.nhs.uk
Or you can phone or text: 07721649311
Page last updated on: