GMMH's anti-racism work shortlisted for national patient safety award
Pictured: The REACH team at the Caribbean and African Health Network (CAHN) Black History Month Gala 2025
Greater Manchester Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust (GMMH) has been shortlisted for a national HSJ Patient Safety Award for its work to tackle racism and improve safety on mental health wards.
Now in their 16th year, the HSJ Patient Safety Awards celebrate outstanding individuals and teams who are improving patient safety across health and care. The awards recognise the critical work being done to deliver safe, high-quality care in increasingly complex and challenging environments, while fostering cultures of openness, learning and collaboration.
GMMH has been shortlisted in the “Developing a Positive Safety Culture Award” category for its Race, Ethnicity and Cultural Heritage (REACH) programme, a staff-led initiative working to create a safe, inclusive, and supportive environment for all patients, staff, families, and visitors.
Racism remains a persistent challenge across the NHS with staff frequently reporting experiences of abuse, discrimination and inconsistent support within services. The REACH programme was developed in direct response to concerns raised by staff at GMMH about their experiences of such incidents on inpatient wards.
REACH began as a local pilot at Meadowbrook Unit, GMMH’s mental health inpatient unit in Salford in April 2024, and was soon after adopted by wards across North View, GMMH’s 105-bed mental health inpatient unit in North Manchester.
Led by staff at the local services, in collaboration with the Quality Improvement team, the early pilots focused on listening to staff, learning from real experiences and co-creating ‘change’ initiatives that could be rapidly trialled, reviewed, and (where meaningful impact was demonstrated) implemented long-term.
Meaningful engagement with individuals who have experienced racism within mental health services was vital, shaping both the changes made and their impact; whilst collaboration with GMMH’s Equality, Diversity and Inclusion leads ensured all initiatives were trauma-informed, culturally sensitive, and inclusive.
From the beginning, ‘restorative practice’ was at the heart of this work. The aim was to break down barriers to inclusion through education, information and collaboration with all staff, service users, carers and the wider communities.
Initiatives included:
- ‘Community agreements’ to set mutual expectations with service users from the offset about how they can expect to be treated and how they are expected to treat others.
- Protected spaces for staff to talk openly about their experiences, hear others’ perspectives and articulate the emotional or practical support they need.
- ‘Active Bystander’ training, highlighting practical guidance and resources on how everyone can safely and constructively address hate when they see it happening.
- Structured post-incident support for staff, including wellbeing action plans and flexible adjustments.
- Cross-system partnerships to reinforce the severity of racial abuse and demonstrate an allied approach to tackling it. For example, working with Greater Manchester Police to issue sanction letters where incidents met the threshold.
- Baseline assessment and regular reporting, using questionnaires, reflection sessions and impact data to understand the real picture and measure the difference that any changes had made over time.
Both Meadowbrook Unit and North View have seen significant positive impact as a result of this work:
- At Meadowbrook Unit, there has been a 32% increase in staff receiving follow up support after reporting an incident.
- May 2025 to April 2026, Meadowbrook Unit issued 33 sanction letters, with 88% of recipients going on to have no further reports of racially aggravated incidents recorded.
- At North View, there has been a 21% increase in reporting of racist incidents by those who experienced them first-hand, and a 36% increase in reports submitted by active bystanders.
- This has led to a 24% increase in formal escalation of such incidents at North View.
- Overall, staff in both settings reported increased confidence to raise concerns, challenge discriminatory behaviour and deescalate incidents.
Since then, a ‘REACH Change Package’ has been developed, which provides a framework through which mental health services across the region and beyond can utilise what works, and tailor, test and embed positive changes based on local need.
REACH has grown into a 12-team ‘Community of Practice’, having been adopted by inpatient and community mental health services across GMMH, alongside GMMH’s Race Equality and Inclusion Staff Network (RESIN), and teams at both Pennine Care and Sheffield Health Partnership NHS Foundation Trusts.
Teams meet regularly to share learning, insights and resources, amplify the experiences of racially minoritised colleagues, and work together to embed meaningful change into everyday care.
Co-produced active bystander training is now offered Trust-wide, alongside a patient champions programme which spotlights the power of patient voices in educating others about the impact of racial abuse.
GMMH also continues to work closely in partnership with GMP, ensuring a consistent approach to sanction letters across multiple localities in Greater Manchester.
Loveness Ncube, Quality Matron at GMMH and lead of the adoption of REACH at North View, said:
“It is an honour to be shortlisted for the HSJ Patient Safety Awards 2026. Through the REACH programme, we are cultivating a safe, inclusive, and supportive environment for all.
“By listening to those with lived experience, learning from the collective expertise of our peers, and being clear on the role that every one of us has to play, we have begun to enact real and meaningful change.
“Our trauma-informed, restorative approach has been vital to this success. Staff have fed back increased confidence in raising concerns and managing challenging situations effectively. This has led to calmer ward environments, more therapeutic engagement and, ultimately, improved outcomes for patients.”
Pictured: Loveness Ncube, Quality Matron at GMMH and lead of the adoption of REACH at North View
Alison Schofield, Quality Improvement Lead at GMMH, said:
“REACH is building an anti-racist community across Greater Manchester, who act because it's the right thing to do. We're creating a safe space for everyone, and our commitment to learning from each other fuels our efforts to bring about positive change.
“As our community grows, so rapidly does our combined set of insights, tools and successful strategies that can be replicated and adapted to meet the unique needs of mental health services and the local communities they serve.
“This would not be possible without the dedication of our front-line teams, and I am delighted that their efforts have been recognised by the prestigious HSJ Patient Safety Awards.”
The HSJ Patient Safety Awards shortlisting follows a number of recent accolades achieved by REACH. The programme was awarded the prestigious Johnathan MacLennan Award at the international Mental Health Improvement Network Annual Conference 2025, in Utrecht, Netherlands.
And in and October 2025 it was awarded Anti-Racist Initiative of the Year at the Caribbean and African Health Network (CAHN) Black History Month Gala .
Winners of the HSJ Patient Safety Awards 2026 will be announced later this year. For further information and updates, visit: HSJ Patient Safety Awards.
For more information about REACH, visit: Race, Ethnicity and Cultural Heritage (REACH). Or, join us this week at day one of the NHS Confed Expo (Wednesday 10 June 2026) where the team will be presenting a session on their work.
