Into the Mainstream

Project Leader: Daniel Robertson Number of Volunteers: 1 Number of Clients served: Male: 170; Female: 56; Total: 226 Number of New Cases: 262

Project Description

Into the Mainstream (ItM) aims to provide the necessary support and advocacy to ensure access to health services for all of NNRF’s clients. The project’s main activity is to ensure GP registration of new arrivals but we also ensure clients are linked to dentists, opticians, mental health services, maternity care and any other health services needed. In addition to ensuring that clients are able to exercise their rights to NHS services, we document the health needs of asylum seekers and other vulnerable migrants, identify and address barriers to health services and use data collected to improve the health situation of the community.

Project Successes

• 145 referrals were registered with a GP • 168 other outcomes were obtained for clients, including dental registration, obtaining HC2 certificates (full help with health costs), making health appointments, making referrals to psychological services, signposting to health promotion services, making optician appointments and negotiating health charges and eligibility for secondary care • 100% of referred clients had appointments made within target timeframes • Developed a series of NHS orientation videos for new arrivals to the UK along with local GP, Dr

Ben Gray, supported by Nottingham East Primary Care Network • The materials were translated by our Language Justice project and recorded in four refugee languages in October • Initiated an intervention in the retendering of the contract for a city-centre GP practice that had been key in supporting vulnerable clients • Organised partners in the homelessness voluntary sector to voice our concerns to the Clinical

Commissioning Group (CCG) with the result that organisations were fully consulted during the transition to a new provider so that information was sent via appropriate channels and there was no loss of service for affected clients • Built links with external partners through regional health forums who run similar projects across the Midlands to allow greater partnership links and explore ways of working better • Successfully advocated for clients with complex casework issues, escalated complaints with the support of external partners for greater outcomes for clients to allow fair treatment access to the health system and services • Four NNRF staff were trained to assist a trained psychotherapist in delivering group therapeutic work for traumatised clients • Developed new ways of working during the Covid pandemic, adapting the service provided to ensure that clients continued to have their health-access needs met

Project Targets/Outcomes

• 100% patients with immediate health needs assessed within 3 weeks • 80% patients without immediate needs assessed within 6 weeks

Plans and hopes for the coming year

The immediate hope is that NNRF is able to successfully retender for the project to avoid enormous disruption for clients and the loss of the project and staff. Should this be achieved, other hopes would be: • Finish the NHS orientation video project • Carry out further research into clients’ use of health services during the Covid pandemic to

provide evidence to lobby the CCG and local providers for better provision of services • Start group trauma-focused therapy with clients • Re-involve volunteers in the project in a greater capacity • Raise awareness about health services to new arrivals (both asylum seekers and refugees) via workshops • Continue networking with multi-agencies and partners to allow better ways of working and implementing services to meet the clients’ needs

Appreciation: we would like to thank…

• Dr Ben Gray • Lisa Kouyomjian-Stanton and Fiona Corbett for their voluntary one-to-one psychotherapeutic work with clients • Public Health Nottingham City for their support and escalating complex casework issues • Hermione Berthels and all General Advice supervisors and volunteers for continuing to support the project • Sue Clague and Lewis Etoria at NHS Nottingham and Nottinghamshire Clinical Commissioning

Group (CCG) for championing the project’s viewpoints on the health needs of clients and offering important platforms to feed into CCG work • Richard Buckwell from Nottingham & Nottinghamshire Keep Our NHS Public and Aliya Yule from the Patients Not Passports network for collaborating on campaigning issues