A fascinating report has been published about consultation in east London with local minority ethnic communities about the services provided by St Joseph’s Hospice.

Examples of some of the things said are:
“I am surprised that the hospice people have asked us to consult with them and talk about our point-of-view being a Somali and Muslim and this shows that they are so interested to learn about our culture which is really good and I was not expecting people like them will come and meet with us” Somali Person

“After attending these sessions I have spoken to other people in our community about death and dying. I have spoken about the fact that death will come to everyone regardless of whether they are religious or not. Although at first people don’t want to talk about it or hear after I explain to them that if we talk about it then we can look at how we prepare then they understand. Coming to these sessions has helped me to talk about it [death] to others. It would be really good to have these discussions on a wider scale, include more people involved in the discussions” Bengali P

This report makes it clear that people from minority ethnic groups do want to be consulted about their healthcare, and need help to riase the issues that may be important to them.

Khatun, M. (2009) Dialogue Groups 1: Report of a process of discussion between local Bengali and Somali people from East London and clinicians and managers from St. Joseph’s Hospice in Hackney, East London London: Social Action for Health

http://www.scribd.com/doc/18437899/Dialogue-Report-August-Final-09

If you have not come across Scribd before, you can scroll through the report in its window, or download and save or print the document. Scribd is a social publisher. Anyone can upload documents and they are immediately published on the internet, and will come up in search engines. Social Action for Health have several interesting documents on their site; one is about minority ethnic group members’ experiences of mental illhealth, for example.