How community research informed Black Thrive’s Employment Project
Black Thrive is a partnership between communities, statutory organisations, the voluntary and private sector. They work together to reduce the inequality and injustices experienced by Black people in mental health services in Lambeth.
The McPin Foundation exists to transform mental health research by putting the lived experience of people affected by mental health problems at the heart of research methods and the research agenda.
Team:
Keisha Simms
Shaun Danquah
Black people in Lambeth are more likely to be unemployed and more likely to have poor health than white people in the borough. Black Thrive’s Employment Project (funded by Impact on Urban Health) was set up to address this disparity and improve employment outcomes for Black people with long-term physical and mental health conditions in Lambeth.
By creating a Working Group to make funding decisions, the Employment Project aimed to redistribute power to individuals with lived experience of long-term conditions (LTCs) and Lambeth’s employment system. However, through their systemic literature review, Black Thrive quickly found that there was a lack of available evidence on effective interventions to specifically improve outcomes for Black people which could inform the Working Group’s decision-making. Therefore, Black Thrive worked with The Social Innovation Partnership (TSIP) and the McPin Foundation to implement a community research approach to better understand the employment needs of Black people with LTCs living in Lambeth.
In partnership with McPin, TSIP recruited and trained eight local people with research skills to create a team of community researchers that all self-identified as Black and had lived experience of LTCs. In order to gain the depth of insight required for this project, we knew a community research approach was needed as the researchers would have a deeper sense of empathy and understanding with the research participants and a heightened ability to interpret the data in a culturally relevant way.
Over a seven-month period, we interviewed 37 local people, analysed the data and produced a final report. Given the context during our research project and the demographics of our research participants, we expanded the scope of our research to also capture people’s experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement.
Our final report, An Equitable Recovery from COVID-19, not only shared insights from the research participants but also from the research journey itself. Our interviews shed light on the reality of working from home being a welcome escape from “toxic” work environments and the need to rethink how to disseminate information and images about systemic racism in a way that protects those with lived experience. Whereas our research journey showed us the need to support the wellbeing of our researchers and the time (and flexibility) required to be truly committed to community leadership and ownership.
Black Thrive is now using this report to inform the types of projects the Working Group should look to fund as part of the Employment Project. As they head into their second round of funding, they are especially looking to fund projects that work with:
Black individuals with physical health conditions
Black and disabled individuals in-work
Employers
“The Black Thrive Employment Project hits home because my dad lived his whole life with mental health issues due to untreated trauma from his mother passing away when he was only 11 years old. He ended up with family members who physically and mentally abused him, and all this affected his whole life. He also ended up having epilepsy so as far as I can remember, he never worked.
My dad never really received any support, not for his mental health nor for his employment. My dad’s story is not unique though. There are many members from the black community that walk around with untreated trauma or other type of mental health issues. This is just something that is not spoken about openly.
What I loved about the Black Thrive Employment Project was the level of involvement that we had as community researchers. When I joined, I assumed that I would only be conducting a number of interviews, but it turned out that we were involved in almost every aspect of the project. This has allowed us to quickly develop new skills relevant to the programme and gain a real sense of responsibility and ownership.
I think that having employed members from within the community and all of us some form of lived experience really added an extra level of richness.”
- Sylvana Walcott, Community Researcher
REPORT: AN EQUITABLE RECOVERY FROM COVID-19: INSIGHTS FROM COMMUNITY RESEARCH IN LAMBETH
In collaboration with The McPin Foundation and Black Thrive, The Social Innovation Partnership and our team of Community Researchers explored the experiences of Black people in Lambeth in relation to employment, COVID-19 and the Black Lives Matter movement. Read the report here.
BLOG: AN EQUITABLE RECOVERY FROM COVID-19
Hear more about the research process and the key findings from this research in collaboration with residents of Lambeth, Black Thrive, McPin Foundation in this blog from TSIP Consultant, Keisha Simms. Read the blog
INFOGRAPHICS
Discover the key findings from this research in these infographics with key findings and recommendations across each section of the report: THE “NEW NORMAL”, WHO CAN WE TRUST? BACK TO BASICS and THE FUTURE OF WORK AND EDUCATION