My last class at BCU was filled with so much information that expanded my knowledge so much. I am so glad I had the opportunity to explore Birmingham City University and meet amazing faculty and students. Without this trip, I would still be blindsided in so many aspects of the world that were brought to life during this experience. Today was filled with presentations by my own peers. There were 3 groups, not including mine, that presented different topics including, mental health, public health and education in the lens of migrancy, and the impact of sexism. Learning from my peers was helpful because I got a perspective from someone my own age.
The first group presented about the Mental Health Services in the UK. This group included Abbie, Kayla, Courtney and Mary. Mental Health Services in the UK runs under the NHS, which is a part of the public sector. The NHS works under the department of health. They get their funding from patient charges and national funds. Even though mental health services are free you still have to get a referral from a general practitioner. You have the right to choose your service and self referral if it involves drugs and alcohol abuse. Wait times can be extremely long which makes it hard to get help when you need it the most. PAUSE was created by Forward Thinking Birmingham, it is a mental health service that caters to ages 0 to 25. CAMHS is another service that treats young people with emotional, behavior and mental health needs.
Next, Quincy, Audrey, Becky and Lindsay presented about Public Health and Education through a diverse lens via migrancy. I feel like migrancy is not talked about often, it was nice to get an inside on what goes on deep within the systems. Some things the group noted was that, black women are 4 times more likely to die while giving birth, the lack of language support and culture insensitivity is why minorities distrust the systems. The UK and US offer medical translation services to those that do not speak English.This allows for people that need English as an additional language, to learn English efficiently as possible!
Alec and Connor looked at the Impact of sexism in Nursing in Education. They mentioned that their main focus was pink collar jobs, patronage discrepancies and deviation in leadership. Pink collar jobs are traditionally held by women, in teachers are 74%, RNs 88%, social work 84%, and NHS employees 77%. These are crazy high numbers for these jobs only being held by women. Even at BCU faculty is outnumbered, the male to female ratio is 1:5. The college attendance rate is 2:3 with females outnumbering males again. Another thing to note is that men access healthcare less, this is due to expectations in society and macho culture. Losing my dad in January, made me realize how serious this issue is. He was sick but kept saying he was fine until he really wasn’t fine. It is so important to tell the men in our lives that it is okay to seek and need help no matter how little or big you think it is. Even though the women outnumber men in the pink collar work forces, the men outnumber women in the pink collar director jobs. The UK secondary head teachers are 62% male, the US superintendent is 85% male, 2,300/3,700 academies are run by men, and the NHS chair is 71% males! US hospital CEOs are 82% male and 66% of hospitals have minimal experience in their field. So.. why aren’t women in these positions? The answer is quite simple, women do not want these positions to take away from them starting a family and they lack the confidence to compete with their male counterparts for the jobs. As a woman, this is very upsetting knowing that these are the reasons women are not going into these positions.
