Welcome to the Ferns Associates website. Those of you who have visited
before will notice some changes to the site.
You can read about the Race Equality and Cultural Capability (RECC)
materials which we have developed for the Department of Health. The materials are nationally recommended for all
mental health practitioners.
Our independently developed Training for Trainers Programme which we have been running for 4 years is now accredited by London Metropolitan University and attracts 40 academic points at Masters level.
Our "RECC Training for staff" course has also been accredited by London Metropolitan University and now attracts 20 points at Masters level.
For further details and dates of next Open courses please go to RECC Updates and RECC downloads pages.
Additionally we are now offering the following courses which can be commissioned as in-house programmes:
- Personalisation and Equality in Individual Assessments
- Joint-working between Interpreters and Practitioners in Mental Health Assessments
- An Introduction to Anti-Discriminatory Risk Work
- Equality in Learning Disability Services
- Support, Time & Recovery (STR) Worker Training
- Community Development Worker (CDW) Training
- Training for Trainers
- Holistic Equality and Cultural Capability
- RECC Training for Team Leaders.
- Using Our Experience Course for Mental Health Service Users
We have worked on a range of Training, Consultancy and Research projects
and examples of these can be found under Current Work. There are are a
number of documents such as reports, articles, book chapters and
published papers which are downloadable.
We are happy to talk with you about your consultancy, research or
training needs on 0208 641 9358
Latest News...
Now University Accredited
Open RECC Training for Trainers programme (six days) in London September 13th,14th,15th,27th and 28thand November 15th 2010
Contact ferns@dsl.pipex.com Tel: 0208 641 9358
for booking form.
NEW! -HOLISTIC EQUALITY AND CULTURAL CAPABILITY COURSE FOR 2010
CONTACT: ferns@dsl.pipex.com for further details or ring 0208-641-9358
New! Using Our Experience - a course written by and for Mental Health Service Users run by experienced Service User Trainers
RECC TRAINING
Ferns Associates are now offering RECC training for Practitioners and a new programme for Team Leaders through a series of three one-day workshops delivered by our experienced BME service user/survivor, carer and practitioner trainers across the country.
We can also deliver a comprehensive package of RECC Training for Trainers over six days along with consultancy to enable you to roll-out RECC training for Practitioners yourself across the locality. Please contact us for details.
FERNS ASSOCIATES OFFER THE AUTHENTIC RECC TRAINING FOR TRAINERS - BEWARE OF IMITATIONS !
(see new report by London CDWs comparing Ferns RECC with RECAP, 'The thin line between pragmatism & tokenism' and 'Defending the quality of RECC training' all in the Downoads section)
The results of the latest ‘Count Me In’ Census on BME mental health have shown us just how far we still need to go to improve mental health services for BME people. Institutional racism in services is a complex phenomenon and is clearly quite intractable. No one simple solution exists to tackling this problem and only a comprehensive strategy with a ‘whole systems’ approach would be effective but training would be an important element. Race Equality and Cultural Capability (RECC) training, authored by Ferns Associates, is a new and exciting initiative with the potential to influence services positively. Through the equal participation of BME service users and carers as full co-trainers with practitioner trainers we have begun to model an innovative and powerful way of partnership working in race equality training.
The challenge with any form of ‘race and culture’ training is ‘credibility’ and ‘quality of delivery’ given the history of sometimes poor implementation and inconsistent quality in the past. Therefore, it is vital that such training is delivered to a high standard to counteract this legacy as well as a lot of inadequate ‘race awareness’ and ‘cultural awareness’ training more recently. The RECC training must be introduced in a way that effectively challenges institutional racism in services and does not misrepresent structural inequalities and abuses of power as mere ‘cultural difference’. In short, we must avoid ‘tick box’ tokenism.
The RECC materials for practitioners were therefore designed by Ferns Associates to be very adaptable and provide MH practitioners with a range of value-based ‘models’ that they could use flexibly and creatively to appropriately meet the needs of those on the receiving end of local MH services. Adaptations would be required to enable accredited RECC Trainers to:
- use their own style of training
- be creative with the RECC materials
- bring in local research studies and statistics
- reflect the local concerns of BME service users and families
- address local challenges to practice in BME mental health
We have found that delivering the RECC Training for Trainers programme is as much about the process of learning as it is about the actual content of the training. In order to facilitate this learning process most effectively we found that trainers delivering the RECC programme to MH practitioners needed to:
- Thoroughly understand the RECC design and why certain theories, models, exercises could be used to improve clinical practice
- Genuinely appreciate the involvement of BME service users in training and have the ability and skills to work with them
- Have been on their own ‘journey of discovery’ and understand the challenges practitioners might face during RECC training
- Have knowledge about local issues, systems and priorities and can then flexibly use and adapt the RECC training materials to address local needs
- Have the skills to constructively challenge practitioners while also motivating and empowering them to reflect and build on what they are doing well and actively develop areas which need improvement
- Ensure training feeds into clinical practice and is part of a ‘whole systems’ approach which is regularly monitored and evaluated to assess its impact on race equality and cultural capability, from a grass roots service user level through to an overall organizational level.
To date we have delivered the RECC-T4T programme to over 200 MH staff, including over 70 Black and Minority Ethnic service users and carers.
At a time when there are ever-increasing demands on organizations to deliver training, there is a temptation to focus on conveying technical knowledge and skills without a well-thought out and explicit value-base, rather than enabling participants to go through a process of critical reflection and personal development that will motivate and empower them to actually change their clinical practice. The RECC approach takes a ‘whole systems’ and values-based approach to improvement in services by ensuring that alongside skills, knowledge development of practitioners there are workplace tasks following each session with structured supervision by line managers. There is also valuable data gathered about the operation of service systems and structures with BME people which is fed through to senior managers and commissioners. RECC recognises the importance of changing ‘hearts and minds’ as well as improving skills and knowledge. As we all know, ultimately the culture of mental health services must change radically to achieve real and sustainable improvement for BME communities. ‘Tick-box’ tokenism has to be rooted out as it is doing damage to the credibility of mental health services with service users, families and practitioners as well creating barriers to genuine initiatives to improve services in the future.