Promoting Equality of Opportunity Award

Dr Anne Douglas, The Compass Team

"Designing an NHS mental health response for asylum seeking people and refugees in Glasgow - challenges and opportunities"

The 1999 Immigration and Nationality Act introduced a dispersal policy that would send asylum-seeking people arriving in the South of England to other parts of the United Kingdom including 10, 000 to Glasgow. This paper describes the creation of the Compass team, a multi-disciplinary specialist mental health liaison team serving clients of all ages. The role of the team in providing therapy while building the cultural competence and capacity of mainstream services will be described. Finally, the negative mental health correlates of the current asylum process will be discussed and the potential role of psychologists in response.

A liaison model was chosen for the Compass team in order to ensure that mainstream NHS services would also develop their capacity to work with this newly arrived client group. The Compass team provide consultation, joint assessments, teaching and training placements. The team also directly provide specialist therapy to clients with a history of complex trauma.

The challenges of the work

The Compass staff have the complex task of helping clients cope with past traumas while facing the current stress of the asylum process. The team have responded on a number of levels: the creation of a Users group and attendance at a Scottish cross-parliamentary group. Most recently research has commenced investigating the impact of the asylum process on mental health. As psychologists working within a human rights framework we are in a unique position to not only observe but also to comment upon and challenge policies that create such distress.