Glasgow City Health and Social Care Partnership (HSCP) has recently joined in delivering a new ‘test of change’ service to support people from the Deaf community whose first language is British Sign Language (BSL) with their mental health recovery.

The prevalence of mental health issues is four times higher for people in the Deaf community than the hearing community because of issues like isolation, social exclusion, discrimination and stigma caused by deafness and communication barriers. In addition, evidence has also shown that accessing Mental Health services is difficult for individuals within the Deaf community, with people often presenting to the service during a mental health crisis. 

To help support people from the Deaf BSL community with their mental health, Paul McCusker has been employed in the role of Deaf Mental Health Peer Support Worker. This role involves using Paul’s lived experience to support people accessing Community Mental Health Teams (CMHTs) in their recovery journey. 

Mental Health Peer Support is based on the principle that having lived and coped with significant challenges in their own lives, Peer Support Workers may be able to help others manage their own mental health recovery.

Paul McCusker, Deaf Mental Health Peer Support Worker said: “This post is unique as it’s important to share lived experience from Deaf-to-Deaf people in a non-clinical way but supported via clinical settings to support Deaf patients’ and service users’ own recovery journey. With this role, I’m hoping more Deaf Peer Support Workers can be trained and employed to promote improved mental wellbeing for Deaf patients and service users in Greater Glasgow and Clyde and in Scotland”.

Paul will communicate with patients and service users using BSL and will help by sharing ideas, offering hope and inspiration and making a plan of recovery that may help patients and service users maintain their health and wellbeing.  

Fiona Moss, Head of Health Improvement and Equalities within our HSCP, said: “I’m really pleased that we have Paul working with us. We’ll be working with patients and service users to understand the changes this role supports and the wider impact on improving accessibility across our services more generally”.

Paul will work across five CMHTs in a test of change initiative. These are:

•    Brand Street, Riverside and Auchinlea CMHTs - Glasgow City HSCP
•    Mile End and Charleston CMHTs - Renfrewshire HSCP and
•    Crown House CMHT - Inverclyde HSCP.

Paul will work as part of the multi-disciplinary team in the above CMHTs and offer to link in with their corresponding in-patient units.

People referred for Deaf Mental Health Peer Support require to communicate using BSL, be receiving a service from one of the above NHSGGC Adult CMHTs and have an identified key worker. 

If you have a patient or service user who may benefit from this service please discuss any potential referrals with Michael Gribben, CPN / Peer Support Worker Supervisor, Riverside CMHT at Michael.Gribben@ggc.scot.nhs.uk, or with Paul McCusker at Paul.Mccusker2@ggc.scot.nhs.uk.

Patient and service user information on Peer Support is available in BSL with subtitles and voice over and in written format.