What is the Patient and Carer Race Equality Framework (PCREF)?
The Patient and Carer Race Equality Framework (PCREF) is an anti-racism initiative that NHS Mental Health Trusts and service providers are implementing to improve services for people from diverse ethnic, racial and cultural backgrounds.
This mandatory framework supports us and other trusts on our journeys to becoming actively anti-racist organisations, by ensuring that we are responsible for co-producing and implementing concrete actions to reduce racial inequalities within our services.
An easy read version of the Patient and Carer Race Equality Forum can be found on the NHS England website.
Image source: NHS England - Patient and carer race equality framework
Why is the PCREF needed?
Evidence shows that people from diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds are more likely to have poor health outcomes and experiences than those from the White-British population. Improving mental health care for people from these backgrounds has been a long-standing challenge for mental health services.
We know from the data we have available that people from racialised and ethnically and culturally diverse communities can have very different experiences of mental health services. For example, NHS England’s data has consistently shown that people from racialised and ethnically and culturally diverse communities (especially Black/Black British communities) are more likely to be detained under the Mental Health Act and are more likely to be detained in hospital for longer when compared to other ethnicities.
The anti-racism approach of the PCREF is a significant step for mental health service provision to tackle race inequalities and inequities, indeed lack of attention to this aspect has created decades of poor care. We are proud to stand with Trusts committed to becoming anti-racism organisation’s and who want to encourage a culture of safety and sense of belonging for all those who access mental health services.Patient and Carer Race Equality Framework
What does the PCREF involve?
The PCREF involves developing a better understanding of the needs of our communities, including who accesses our services and whether people from diverse ethnic or cultural backgrounds have equal access to support for their mental health.
We are committed to improving the access, experiences and outcomes of racialised and ethnically and culturally diverse communities, patients and carers by respectfully drawing upon their experiences.
As an anti-racism approach the PCREF helps us to:
- Make a commitment to advancing mental health equalities.
- Improve our governance structures, to include better representation of racialised people and improve services accordingly.
- Improve data collection around ethnicity and other demographics.
- Examine the information to improve services to better meet our local population needs.
- Use our ethnicity data to co-produce plans to improve access to services and outcomes for racialised groups and make them publicly available.
- Commit to improving interactions with racialised groups.
- Support Patients and Carers to be actively involved at every level of Mental Health Trusts’ and mental health providers governance structures, included in decision making, and consulted about individual care and services accessed.
- Ensure patient experience data is used, monitored and flowed to national data-sets to enable bench- marking, lesson-sharing and service improvement.
- Ensure outcome measures are routinely used and monitored locally, and flowed to national datasets to enable benchmarking, lesson-sharing and improvement of services.
- Agree approaches for implementing a ‘real time’ and transparent feedback loop for racialised and ethnically and culturally diverse communities.
What have Derbyshire Healthcare done so far?
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We have appointed our Executive Medical Director as the Executive Lead for PCREF.
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The Executive Leadership Team has also approved the recruitment of a full‑time PCREF Lead, and the recruitment process is currently underway.
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We have developed a PCREF action plan, which has been approved by the Quality and Safeguarding Committee. This work will continue to be refined as we engage a broader range of stakeholders.
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Through discussions across the Trust and with partner organisations, we have increased targeted engagement with diverse communities and identified areas to improve on. Externally, this includes access, experience, outcomes and internally cultural competency and awareness.
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We have set up a PCREF stakeholder forum, which helped establish a PCREF Steering Group and its Terms of Reference.
What happens next?
We intend to publish our PCREF self‑assessment and action plan by the end of March 2026, subject to Trust Board approval.
Moving forward, our Trust Board will oversee and monitor the delivery of action plans aimed at reducing health inequalities among diverse ethnic and cultural communities.
However, the PCREF will be implemented through a partnership approach. A key priority will be working collaboratively with staff, patients, carers and our communities to identify and address racial disparities in care, and ultimately improve mental health outcomes.
