New Centre Offers Cross-Cultural Psychological Support

New Centre Offers Cross-Cultural Psychological Support

A new centre intended to promote the benefits of counselling and therapy for troubled families and couples from black and other minority groups has opened with MF support.

The Centre for Cross-Cultural Studies will reach out to people, including refugees and asylum seekers, who fail to seek outside help when family relationships start to founder.

At present, those in crisis may not know such services exist, while those that do may have little or no cultural understanding of what such services can offer or achieve. Meanwhile, health workers offering existing services may have little awareness or understanding of the beliefs, customs and practices of minority communities, or the issues that are of particular concern to them.

The new centre, which is part of the Institute of Family Therapy (IFT) in Stephenson Way, London NW1, will provide training in basic counselling and support skills for those working with ethnic minorities through which they can enhance the strengths of the families they help.

The centre will also offer a range of clinical services including counselling and systemic psychotherapy, as well as supervision for those it has trained. In addition, a programme of debates and seminars, along with research projects and publications, will raise awareness about cross- cultural issues, and challenge discrimination.

Partnering the IFT in the project, which has been funded by the Lloyds TSB Foundation for England and Wales, are the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture, the Refugee Council and Nottingham University.

Director of the Centre Renee Singh, a systemic psychotherapist, says: "We live in a climate of suspicion and fear where cultural misunderstandings can arise. There is so much in the media about refugee issues and about living in a multicultural society. These stories highlight the dilemmas and debates going on in the field. It’s important to have a centre to address all these questions.

"We are based in Camden where black and ethnic minorities form 25% of the population, but that’s not reflected in mental health service providers. People from minority backgrounds all deserve access to culturally appropriate training and clinical services. I hope it will be a place where ideas are created, a base for knowledge and research.”

Medical Foundation principal family therapist Jocelyn Avigad says: "There are families and individuals who are part of marginalised groups who do not get access to, or do not want to access the mainstream services that exist both statutory and voluntary because it does not feel comfortable to do so. Very few members of minority groups seek access to such services.

"The new centre is about creating a service that is culturally sensitive to their needs. Many statutory services are not culturally equipped to deal with issues such as female genital mutilation, arranged marriages or tensions between conservative parents and children educated in British schools, while the asylum process can throw up many difficulties.

"Our aim is to provide therapeutic help to those whose voices are not heard in this society, who consider themselves powerless.”

Central to the work of the centre will be systemic family therapy, a relatively new treatment method that focuses on the relationship between individual family members, extended family members and others of significance to the core family.

It encourages family members, and those closely involved with them, either verbally, or in the case of children, through play and art therapy, to express their perceptions and anxieties in front of each other in order to identify underlying patterns, rules, beliefs and issues that may be unhelpful, as well as overt problems. In building up the family unit’s understanding of the difficulties facing its individual members, and the family as a whole, it seeks to bring about change.

Further information from Centre for Cross Cultural Studies: 020 7391 9150