Sarah Amani - "Nepalese were not represented"
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Funding success for mental health nurse
By Stephanie CockroftDecember 30, 2011
A NURSE has won funding for a project that will aim to improve mental health services for the Nepalese community living in Aldershot and Farnborough.
Sarah Amani is spearheading the 12-month project, which will involve creating an outreach service in the two towns.
The 30-year-old won the £12,000 grant through the national Mary Seacole award, which each year gives money to six nurses, midwives of health visitors who want to improve healthcare equality for black and minority communities.
Sarah, who lives in Woking, was inspired to pursue the idea when a previous project she worked on, created to improve mental health access for young people, attracted few Nepalese.
She realised most of the Nepalese community were not using mental health services until they reached crisis point.
She said: “It was clear the Nepalese were not being represented in our service and when they are accessing it, it is after having gone without help for a long time.
“We have a couple of theories for that: either it is the stigma attached to mental illness or a lack of awareness about the services. Feedback has told us there are also often cultural and language barriers that prevent people from accessing the services they need.”
Sarah will start her project by setting up a steering group, which will help collect data on the healthcare inequalities that exist in Aldershot and Farnborough.
She then aims to develop a training programme to set up community health ambassadors, who will work as outreach helpers. She already has 10 volunteers, both British and Nepalese, who will act as mental health ‘first aiders’ in the community.
Sarah said: “We are giving the community an opportunity to help themselves.
“It is about finding out what they think they need and working to put it into place.
“The aim of the first aiders is to allow the community to become more savvy and aware of what mental health problems look like.”
Sarah, who beat off competition from other nurses to win the cash, is the team manager with the Early Intervention Team, based in Aldershot.
Her team was recently highly commended at a national awards ceremony for its success in improving access to mental health treatment for young people in Rushmoor, Surrey Heath and Hart.
Leaders of that programme said the improved access to treatment helped reduce hospital admissions for young mental health sufferers by 75% in one year.
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