Pasalo CIC

Pásalo, a not-for- profit organisation, aims to share knowledge and experience developed at Mothertongue multi-ethnic counselling service (2000-2018). People from black and minority ethnic backgrounds experience health inequalities. They do not access early interventions which could avoid crises and more serious mental health interventions. Mental health and frontline workers have seldom had sufficient training in working across difference. This includes uncomfortable topics such as unconscious bias, power dynamics, social justice and change, white privilege and guilt, multilingual people’s needs, working effectively with interpreters. Clients from Mothertongue who were consulted and who influenced the development of Mothertongue’s therapeutic model, repeatedly stated that these are issues which go to the heart of experiences of BAME people and are vitally important when thinking about factors that affect mental health. Mental health and health and social care practitioners can feel de-skilled when working with people for whom English is not their first language. People who need an interpreter frequently, and unfairly, have to wait longer on the waiting list until a practitioner is found who feels confident to work with them. European migrants asked about their experiences with mental health care-providers, said that they underestimated their language issues and that language barriers resulted in greater feelings of paranoia and aggression (De Maesschalck, 2012). The highly experiential training offered by Pásalo equips practitioners to feel confident to work with people’s identities across race, culture and languages, to be attentive to their own privilege and prejudice, to challenge as well as support and to dare to make relationships, make mistakes and repair ruptures in relationships across difference. Over 700 practitioners were trained this year with an average score for the usefulness of the training of 9/10. Reflective Practice Groups for multilingual therapists held between 2020 and 2024 were evaluated with an overall theme emerging of improved confidence and sense of professional identity as a result of attending the groups. Some examples of feedback from participants on training courses this year: “This training has been excellent at not only exploring using interpreters but getting staff to think about their position in therapy with client’s who may speak other languages. Thank you. So interesting hearing about different identities in different languages, and about different levels of confidence delivering therapy in our professional mother tongue. Will definitely impact my practice so thank you!! I have experienced language attrition. I haven’t had the terminology for this until now. I will explore my link between trauma and language attrition. Main take away – when there are language differences these are not necessarily a problem, a boundary or a thing to be fixed like a broken chair, but part of the therapeutic work and experience. Ensuring the (interpreting) agency is putting the welfare of the client first (i.e. not being last on their list). Training makes me want to work with client who needs an interpreter to learn! Be brave about working with multilingual clients. This doesn’t need to be a fear. Even when not working with an interpreter, it has given me tools to deepen my empathy when considering what it means in the therapy room and also as a member of the UK to have to prioritise speaking English as a non-native speaker. I feel more confident in my ability to feel a deeper warmth towards clients who do not speak English as a first language, rather than being distracted by my anxiety of not understanding them. I feel more empowered to be honest and transparent about when I cannot understand, and explain how much I care about what they are trying to express. I found this training extremely helpful not only to gain confidence in working with interpreters, but also connecting with my own views, biases and shame. A really great piece of free online training. Probably the most helpful one I have ever done. Thank you very much for this.” We have continued to develop capacity to work therapeutically across languages with people who have migrated. We have published a number of papers and chapters e.g. on reflective groups for medical interpreters and interpreting in performance , and trained psychological therapists, interpreters and allied health professionals to facilitate Reflective Practice Support Groups (RPSGs) for their own professions. We have received further funding from Awards for All, the National Lottery for use over two years, to run more reflective practice groups, training groups and related sessions of the Bilingual Forum. We held a successful in-person Bilingual Forum in London in November, 2024 and eight subsequent reflective practice facilitator development groups online. The following list provides a snapshot of our other activities: • Delivered supervision to schools counselling teams, interpreters, refugee support group coordinator. • Co-developed a legacy project and strategy with Colour Visions, a collaborative arts and mental health project which facilitates the creation of visual art with asylum seekers housed in hotels or other temporary spaces in Reading, UK. This resulted in an Almanac which was launched on August 14, 2025 at Turbine House, Riverside Museum, Reading. • Via Colleagues across Borders, we continued our long-term relationship of mentoring support with STARS (St Andrews Refugee Services) Cairo, Egypt. All the work of Colleagues Across Borders is done pro bono. • Delivered Resilience and Reflexivity training and three reflective practice support groups to post graduate students at Birkbeck, University of London for fourth year. • Keynotes given at a conference hosted by the University of Newcastle, September 2024, and BACP Student Conference, February 2025. • Continuing co-investigation with University of Reading of health professionals’ perceptions and experiences of working with interpreters. Podcast, devised with GPs and a midwife, currently in production. • Work begun on creation of training films and materials for ESRC funded project to research Languages in Conflict at the University of York over the next three years. • Research project group currently evaluating multilingual reflective practice groups (2020 to 2024). • Proposal for book on Reflective Practice Group Facilitation accepted by Routledge. (Deadline submission March 2026).