The History of The Lateef Project
The Difficult Years
After completing the research, the team felt confident that this would lead to the mainstreaming of the service with The Lateef Project becoming a permanent partner with NHS services in Birmingham. However, circumstances with funding suddenly changed in two ways, and this was not in relation to clients needs.
The Lateef Project lost its champion in the NHS, simultaneously the Clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) were created following the Health and Social Care Act in 2012, and replaced primary care trusts on 1 April 2013.
It was overly simplistic to believe that Doctors would naturally commission a mental health service for Muslims, a service that worked more effectively with 1 in 5 of the Birmingham population.
Instead, circumstances became political for The Lateef Project. There were rumours regarding where the money for the service came from and why.
Instead of accepting the research evidence The Lateef Project was told that it needed to provide more evidence this time showing the long term impact of Islamic counselling up to 3 years after the work. This research would be done by the NHS on the evidence of The Lateef Project. In the mean-time the work at the GP surgery continued without clarity about the long term future of The Lateef Project.
In 2014, The Lateef Project met with the NHS following the release of the NHS analysis of the data. Two years later, the analysis had tracked the same clients worked with in the first study, this was now the 3 years post long-term impact of Islamic counselling. The results were simply set out in terms of the impact on secondary care in terms of A&E, inpatients and outpatients.
This study showed that in 2014 there was a:
37% reduction in Accident and Emergency attendance with a 36% related reduction in cost.
58% reduction in Inpatient attendance with a 63% related reduction in cost.
41% reduction in Outpatient attendance with a 39% related reduction in cost.
Again, security of the service was anticipated but instead the results could not be understood. The decision was to suspend the funding of The Lateef Project until it could present further research evidence (qualitative evidence of why it worked). The service was working with Muslims with complex mental health needs and staff of The Lateef Project decided to work voluntarily to support the community. This was the set for one year.
In 2015, The Lateef Project became part of a wider network of organisations and won a contract to provide counselling through the National Increasing Access to Psychological Therapy mental health programme (IAPT), though under-funded this was a shot in the arm.
Following this The Lateef Project secured funding for Chiildren’s IAPT. Between these two contracts The Lateef Project extended its work from counselling adults to counselling adults and children.
But even so, it seemed as though the needs of Muslim clients were still not properly addressed. The children’s IAPT contract regularly referred non Muslim young people experiencing drug problems to The Lateef Project in order to fulfil its requirements.
The Office of the Lateef Project at the Zinnia Centre was reallocated.
Some felt that The Lateef Project was being funded to fail.
Then disaster struck in 2018, the surgery where the face-to-face service was based was flooded leading to the closure of the surgery and the reallocation of its patients. The Lateef Project was without a base but still had vulnerable clients at risk. Faced with these difficulties, the clients service reduced its caseload to those with high risk and therefore transferring all other clients to services that would effectively support them. The Lateef Project unable to access NHS computers could no longer record its work in a way that ensured funding – but faced with clients some of whom were suicidal, The Lateef Project continued to provide a service to those at risk in the community.
Read our next chapter here.