LMCP, Princess Road, Manchester
0161 226 4632
info@lmcp.co.uk

What We Do

Learn • Motivate • Change • Prosper

For over 50 years, LMCP has been supporting community development in Manchester. Today, we are involved in outreach work, research, cultural awareness training, consultancy, user engagement, capacity building and influencing policy.

Influencing strategies and policies, service development and improvement to improve equality

LMCP staff have contributed to the development and/or improvement of culturally appropriate services by serving on:

Management committees/ Boards of other organisations

  • Manchester Carers Forum (Vice Chair)
  • Manchester Crossroads Care
  • Alzheimer’s Society Manchester Branch
  • Trafford Health Watch

Strategy, policy, steering and working groups in Manchester

  • Black Community Care Consultation Forum (later BME CF)
  • Meals Strategy Group
  • Luncheon Club Organisers Group
  • Rehabilitation Working Group
  • Adult Home Finders Working Group
  • Manchester Race and Health Forum + subgroups eg mental health
  • Carers Strategy Group
  • Better Government for Older People Working Group
  • Manchester Older Persons Network
  • HOP (Community Health Council)
  • Carers Assessment and Care Planning Group
  • Residential Homes Working Group
  • Home Care Standards Research Working Group
  • Scrutiny Group – mental health services
  • North West Regional Task Force for implementing the National Services Framework for Older People
  • NSF for Older People Local Implementation Team
  • Hill Side Resource Centre Day Care Steering Group
  • Hill Side Meals Strategy Group
  • Sheltered Housing
  • BMECF subgroup (recruitment of development worker to support BME groups)
  • Better Care Higher Standards
  • Admiral Nurses Steering Group
  • PALS steering group
  • Mental Health Social Inclusion Strategy Group
  • Carers Group (Mental Health)
  • Mental Health Services for Older People Stakeholder Group
  • Voluntary Sector Mental Health Forum
  • MHPEG (Mental Health Providers Engagement Group)
  • Mental Health Advocacy Group
  • Advocacy Services for Older People
  • Mental Health Local Implementation Team
  • MMHSCT Equality and Diversity Group
  • Central Manchester PCT Diversity and Equalities Committee
  • Partnership for Older People Projects
  • Valuing Older People / PRIAE – Ageing and Ethnicity Steering Group
  • Carers Information Network
  • Manchester Carers Network
  • Carers Working Group
  • Central Manchester PCT BME VCS partnership
  • Manchester Health Link Transitional Board
  • BME Advocacy collaboration
  • VCS Health and Wellbeing Forum (MACC)

Strategy, policy, steering and working groups in Trafford

  • BME Senior Management Engagement Forum
  • BME Service Improvement Partnership (member and Chair) and various subgroups eg Learning and Development, BME extra care
  • Shrewsbury Street extra care development group (now Limelight)
  • Carers’ Services Board
  • Citizens’ Reference Board
  • Communities and Wellbeing Prevention Group
  • Support Brokerage Network
  • Trafford Information Network
  • BME Shared Care Model Group
  • Telecare Steering Group
  • Trafford TLAP (Think Local Act Personal) Programme Board
  • Old Trafford Health and Wellbeing Forum

In addition, our staff have contributed to numerous conferences, workshops, consultations, audits, reviews, events and meetings with health, social care, housing and other professionals to highlight unmet need and development and deliver and/or improve services and support.

We have supported senior officers as a ‘critical friend’ and provided ‘free’ equality and diversity consultancy and training support to statutory organisations and their providers.

 Panels:

Over the years we have contributed to panels to help commissioners recruit providers/staff that can deliver culturally and religiously appropriate services/support:

  • Residential care
  • BME Home care
  • BME luncheon clubs/ meals delivery
  • Wellbeing Grant
  • Mental Health Wellbeing Grant
  • BME Learning and Development Worker, Manchester Adult Social Care
  • BME Learning and Development Worker, Trafford Adult Social Care

Sometimes this involved making sacrifices by foregoing the opportunity to apply for funding ourselves, for example, with the Wellbeing Grant.


Celebrations to improve awareness, access/uptake of services/support, breakdown barriers/reduce stigma, encourage prevention … 

  • Carers Week
  • Carers Rights Day
  • World Mental Health Day
  • International Day of Older Persons
  • World Diabetes Day
  • World Heart Day

Providing support to service providers:

Having acknowledged and having developed strategies to diversify the social care workforce, Manchester Social Services and their providers were struggling to recruit carers from different communities. LMCP secured funding from Tudor Trust / Lloyds TSB Foundation to recruit a worker who supported South Asian informal carers to move into care-related work. This required awareness raising, breaking down barriers, organising care-related training in partnership with a College, organising work experience, assisting with job applications and interview preparations.

Manchester Social Service (particularly Adult Placement), Manchester Care and other care providers benefited greatly from this by recruiting staff from a pool of potential care workers created by LMCP.

Supporting Manchester Social Services to develop and deliver culturally and religiously appropriate day care at Hillside Resource Centre. This included LMCP staff and volunteers articulating a need, helping the Centre Manager put together a ‘business case’, training Hillside staff in cultural awareness, identifying potential service users and providing practical support, for example, preparing culturally/religiously appropriate meals.

Capacity Building

LMCP supported a number of community organisation to become service providers. This included locating community groups; helping them to do a community self-survey to understand the need for social care amongst their community members, particularly the elderly; assisting them to understand service development and delivery under a contractual agreement; helping groups to secure contracts via tendering; providing ongoing support directly and via such forums as the Luncheon Club Organisers Group.


Contribution to research and publications / good practice

1992    Asian Elders Survey to look at social carer needs of older Asians and their awareness of personal social services. Field work was conducted by students from Stockport College

1996    Mental Health Social Work in General Practice – consultancy input on minority ethnic communities

1997    Extending a helping hand, Paul Simic, University of Manchester and Ismail Lambat in Community Care, 2-8 October 1997 – an article on work carried out by LMCP to support Asian families to prevent abuse of older persons

1997    Modifications of brief cognitive assessments for use with elderly people from the South Asian sub-continent, G Rait, M Morley, I Lambat and A Burns in Ageing and Mental Health (1997); 1(4); 356-363

2000    Towards a Mental Health Strategy for Ethnic Minority Communities in Manchester,  Mark Greenwood, Mental Health Commissioning Team, Manchester Health Authority, Manchester Social Services Department

2004    Celebrating our Cultures: Guidelines for Mental Health Promotion with Black and Minority Communities, Department of Health, November 2004, pp 156-159

2004    Making It Diverse, Mental health promotion and back and minority ethnic groups, Mary Tidyman, radical mentalities briefing paper 3, mentality, 2004, p30

2004    Clear Voices. A good practice guide to involving older people and carers in strategic  planning and service development, J Scott with R Bhaduri and C Sutcliffe, PSSRU, University of Manchester  (LMCP organised a focus group)

2004    Grey matters: Growing older in deprived areas – a guide for donor and grant-makers, C Botham and T Lumley, New Philanthropy Capital (example of good practice in supporting older people)

2008    Case 4.4 Ethnically sensitive management, Ahmed I Lambat in C Chew-Graham, R Baldwin and A Burns, Integrated Management of Depression in the Elderly, Cambridge UP, 2008, pp 74-79

2011    Engaging with Hard to Reach Groups: A Workbook, Ahmed I Lambat and Yusuf I Lambat, LMCP (commissioned by Trafford Council)

2015    Perceptions of self-defined memory problems vary in south Asian minority older people who consult a GP and those who do not: a mixed-method pilot study. C Giebel, D Challis, A Worden, D Jolley, KS Bhui, A Lambat and N Purandare, International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry,             onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/gps.4337/pdf

2016    Care Coordination for Older People in the Non-Statutory Sector: Lessons from  Research, PSSRU, University of Manchester (research conducted in partnership with LMCP)             http://research.bmh.manchester.ac.uk/pssru/nihrsscr/projects/carecoordination/ExpertBriefing4Complete.pdf

2017    Age, memory loss and perceptions of dementia in South Asian ethnic minorities. C  Giebel, A Worden, D Challis, D Jolley, KS Bhui, A Lambat, E Kampanellou and N Purandare,  Journal of Ageing and Mental Health,  www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13607863.2017.1408772

2017    Improving Quality in Mental Health Care, Mark Wilberforce, PSSRU, University of Manchester, 2017 (LMCP organised focus groups and assisted with surveys)

Implementing the Person-Centred Community Care Inventory (PERCCI) as a measure for quality in social care services  https://www.york.ac.uk/spru/projects/person-centred-community-care-inventory/

Enhancing person-centredness in the community support of older people (EPIC) https://www.sscr.nihr.ac.uk/projects/p143/

A research-based learning resource – Helping Older People with mental health needs Engage in Social care  https://hopes.org.uk

Exploring experiences of loneliness and improving social care support. This study is testing a service improvement approach from healthcare in which people using and providing a service co-design changes  https://www.mmu.ac.uk/research/research-centres/hpac/projects/design-social-care

https://www.york.ac.uk/spru/projects/exploring-loneliness-improving-social-care/

Curious about Care – The project is developing a situational judgement test to assess the person-centredness of domiciliary care workers  https://www.york.ac.uk/spru/projects/curious-about-care/

The Synergi Collaborative Centre is committed to forming partnerships and collaborations to transform the realities of ethnic inequalities in severe mental health illness and multiple disadvantage and prioritise lived experience narratives.  https://legacy.synergicollaborativecentre.co.uk/synergi-five-years-of-foundation-building/

Adding value

 Since the mid-1990s, we have successfully provided placements to 148 Social Work students from local academic institutions. Students have contributed and continue to contribute to all aspects of our work, allowing us to reach far more Manchester residents than we would have been able to just with the Council funding.

For a number of years now we have had a qualified and registered social worker on our team to help practice educate social work students and keep us up to date with evidence-based practice.

Our staff have over the years provided ‘free’ consultancy support to senior staff and training to frontline staff (directly eg to Hillside Resource Centre staff) and indirectly through joint visits (assessments and reviews).

We have also had a volunteer recruitment and development programme for a long time which includes six weeks structured training, DBS and supervision.

Our approach and impact

We support the individual, family and community using a ‘slow social work’, community development and holistic approach. Our focus is on prevention and early intervention.

Whilst it is difficult to measure the impact of our work, we would like to believe that we have made a contribution to the development and delivery of social and health care strategies, policies and services that meet the needs of Manchester’s diverse population.

We have helped professionals acknowledge the need to be culturally competent and have supported students and professionals to develop cultural competence.

We have been successful in raising awareness of needs, barriers and challenges. For example, when we started supporting South Asian carers, the carers and their families did not want to recognise the role nor seek outside help for carers or the cared-for. Over the past 26 years we have

  • raised the profile of carers; carers openly talk about their experiences at our monthly meetings
  • encouraged carers and the cared-for to seek outside help
  • encouraged South Asian carers to take up care-related work

With regards to mental health, we were unable to say that our drop-ins were for women with mental health needs. Now we have large numbers of Manchester residents celebrating World Mental Health Day, those with mental health needs openly talking about their conditions at our drop-ins and monthly Asian Carers’ Group meetings.