EACH Project - Embedding Ambassadors in Community Health

The EACH Project, being headed up by the Strategic Migration Partnership Team, aims to build skills and confidence in NHS frontline staff delivering healthcare to new third country migrants.

Its focus is on improving NHS access for women from Asian and African countries in particular.

A series of interactive workshops will be delivered across the region over the next three years, to over 600 NHS staff by representatives of local Black and Minority Ethnic Community Organisations. There will be no charge for attendance, and the sessions will include raising intercultural awareness and working effectively with interpreters and translators in healthcare settings - subjects that all NHS staff should be competent and confident in.

The EACH team recruited sixteen local organisations to develop and deliver the workshops during autumn 2011, and has subsequently run a number of 'train-the-trainer' updates for them, as well as building up an EACH network of workshop leaders across the region.

A three-hour pilot intercultural awareness workshop was run by the 'Muskaan Dacorum Pakistani Women's Group' in December 2011 in Watford, attended by almost twenty NHS staff, from a wide range of occupations. These included District Nursing; Midwifery; Practice Manager; Safeguarding Children Nurse Specialist.

The workshops will all be subject to short and longer-term impact assessment. The immediate evaluation that took place at the end of the pilot workshop showed that the vast majority of participants had found it extremely positive.

Comments included:

"Hugely informative, but identified a personal need for more information and a greater understanding"

"Lots of information, and very informative, and excellent material used"

"It was a very educational event, and I would bring the information back to my team".

Following this pilot session, a series of workshops will begin from February, and will run in every county in the region. If you would like to know which groups are running workshops in your area, please follow this link and scroll down for more information: http://www.eelga.gov.uk/campaigns-and-projects/strategic-migration-partnership.aspx

For more information contact the Strategic Migration Partnership team.