Mentoring scheme aims to address BAME health needs

The Walk In My Shoes project sees residents paired up with senior NHS staff to discuss their experiences.

It hopes to address issues of unconscious bias and a lack of understanding of medical needs specific to the BAME community.

The NHS said it welcomed the project as there was “evidently a problem”.

Eight members of the BAME community work closely with eight health service directors.

“We are asking important questions but also personal questions because we are getting to know each other as individuals,” said project leader Valerie Simms.

“What we are going to have is grassroots communications to make the NHS aware of what BAME communities are all about.

“We are hoping that that we will have more diverse communications with individuals and, because we are working with the directors of the NHS, it is going to be filtered down to a more community level.”

Paul Roberts, chief executive of the Gloucestershire Health and Care NHS Foundation Trust, said there was “evidently a problem” in the NHS “as a whole” and locally.

“Health outcomes for many BAME communities are worse than for the majority white population, and within the NHS black people are less represented, and we need to sort that out.”