Awaaz users group was set up in 1994 with the support and help of Having a Voice. There had been and still is very low take up of psychiatric services by Asian people living in North Manchester although there is a sizable Asian population living in North Manchester. Professionals were of the opinion that Asian people support each other very well and used this to explain the low uptake of psychiatric services. The few Asian people who were referred to the psychiatric system felt angry about the way they were treated. One of the Asian users who was using Park House at that time had been to a user group in the hospital where his needs were not met. He felt that the needs of Asian people could only be addressed if Asian users and careers got together to look at the needs of Asian people.

With the support and help of Having a Voice, an Asian users group was set up. Three other Asian users joined the group and they started meeting on a monthly basis in Park House. It soon became apparent that if the group was to grow the meetings should happen in the community where the majority of Asian users or potential users were. The road to setting up an Asian user group managed and run by Asian service users was a long one. First of all there were very few service users using the service and those who used it did not want to be identified as service users due to the acute stigma within Asian communities associated with psychiatric services.

We looked around for a model Asian user group in the country but could not find one. The first step was to build trust with users and the community and start a group that people would feel free to come to. The issues that needed addressing were:

1. Confidentiality
2. How to set up users group where people did not want to be identified as service users.
3. The issue of gender. Men and women in the same room for a drop-in group for Asian people seemed a non starter at the time.
4. Would service users who were struggling coping in their own lives with very few appropriate services be able to take on managing and running a project ?

We were determined that we would go ahead and do it rather than spending a lot of time thinking about it. The way we decided to start it was to offer something to existing Asian service users. The three main principles we agreed on were:

A safe place where people were not identified with their psychiatric label A user friendly place where people would be looked at as individuals A place where Asian service users views would be taken seriously. This was done through a drop-in once a week which was funded by a small grant from Social Services who were sympathetic, and offered office space in Woodville and expenses to cover office costs.

It soon transpired that people wanted a one-stop service under one roof, an organization that they could trust, that would deal with their day to day problems, give them space and take them seriously no matter how trivial their problem.

Another problem was to get more people involved. We wanted to advertise ourselves without making existing users feel uncomfortable and deal with the taboo associated with mental illness. We started an Urdu/English newsletter in which we set out to address the issue from a statistical point that one in four people suffer from some sort of mental health problem and that it was as common as any other illness. We made regular visits to the mental health unit in North Manchester and were determined that every Asian patient admitted or using the out patients knew about Awaaz .

We took on the role of advocate for existing service users and made ourselves available for Asian people who needed an independent advocacy service. Advocates were users or ex-users of mental health services and knew not only the system but had the added advantage of knowing the cultural and linguistic background.