Perceptions of and access to occupational therapy services among the Somali community in the UK: cultural barriers and systemic challenges
Anita Atwal, Varsha Chauhan Gawde, Farhan Hassan, Emma Nicklin, Nicola Plastow · 2025
Read Perceptions of and access to occupational therapy services among the Somali community in the UK: cultural barriers and systemic challenges by Anita Atwal, Varsha Chauhan Gawde, Farhan Hassan, Emma Nicklin, Nicola Plastow (2025) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/pmc-12837127.txt.
Description
Occupational therapy helps people live independently, yet uptake varies sharply by ethnic group, and the Somali community in England is both under-researched and disadvantaged. The five authors explored how that community perceives the service and what blocks access. They ran six storytelling circles, recruited through purposive and snowball sampling with materials co-written in Somali and English, and sessions held in both languages.
Three themes emerged: the struggle to navigate the health system and the therapy itself, the human cost of long waits, and questions of disclosure and trust. The authors call storytelling a culturally sensitive way to hear community voices. They urge services to invest in sustained, community-led outreach and to rebuild delivery around equity and cultural humility, warning that without change the community stays underserved.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Anita Atwal, Varsha Chauhan Gawde, Farhan Hassan, Emma Nicklin, Nicola Plastow |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2025 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 56 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |