Education in a Changing Environment 3: Guidelines for Papers, Synopses and Workshop Summaries

This project aimed to investigate the reasons why applications to Health and Social Care (H&SC) programmes from Black and Ethnic Minority (BME) groups is low, and to attempt to address the problem, working with three colleges/schools. Qualitative (focus group n=7, reflective reports n=3) and quantitative (questionnaires n=239) data collection methods were employed. Triangulation of descriptive data showed lack of awareness of the H&SC professions by students and careers advisors. Careers advisors’ perception of barriers for these groups entering H&SC professions related to socio-cultural issues which were not borne out by the data collected from the BME communities. Introduction Statistics regarding ethnicity in the health workforce (National Audit Office 2002) show that only 4% of nurses and midwives and 2.5% of allied health professions were Asian. There may be many reasons for this under representation, one of which may be the reluctance of members of some cultural/ethnic groups to apply for programmes of education in these subjects (Bhattacharyya et al 2003). Evidence suggests that BME groups are proportionally over represented in higher education (HE), but this is not the case for programmes in H&SC (Connor et al 2002, DFES 2003). This is reflected at the University of Salford where the Faculty of H&SC recruits 50% fewer BME students to its programmes in nursing and health care professions than other programmes. This is despite the high proportions of BME groups in and around Manchester and the fact that the majority of students at the University of Salford are recruited from this area (Office of National Statistics 2001 Census, HESA 2001). However it is clear that there are opportunities locally for redressing the balance. Building on a range of government initiatives aimed at recruiting more employees from BME backgrounds into the NHS (DOH 2000a, 2000b, 2001, 2003) this project aimed to look at the reasons for low recruitment of BME students in H&SC generally and, more specifically to subsequently increase recruitment onto related programmes. Literature Review General Awareness of Health and Social Care Professions The most significant theme to emerge from the literature was the lack of awareness of careers in H&SC other than medicine, dentistry and nursing. (Helm et al 2002, Klem and Notter 2001, Greenwood and Bithell 2003). Helm et al (2002) found that pupils, parents and communities knew little about careers in health other than a few rudimentary facts and this was common across all ethnic