And so there have been several initiatives that have been inspired by Mikey’s story. One of them is 4WardEver UK. That was set up in remembrance of Mikey and it’s a resource. It’s basically a massive resource of contacts, information, solicitors, stories, case profiles on people who have died in custody, over 700 are listed on the website. It’s used by researchers and academics all over the world. And, you know, on websites you can go onto the back end and you can see the analytics, how many people are visiting, where they’re visiting from, even down to what type of device they’re using, and we get hits from all over the world: China, Australia, America, and so on and so forth.
So 4WardEver was the first initiative that came out of Mikey’s death. And we set it up because at the time there was nowhere that really did that. You could not, if you wanted to find out about families who had died in custody you would have to do a Google, general Google search and find individual sources, reports on news websites or whatever, but we wanted to condense that all into one place so families can just go to one place and they can find lots of information. And then came Red Alert. So Red Alert is in two parts. One part has been in place for some years now, because we were funded by the Edge Fund to set up an online database. And it’s a database that families can go on to and use and they can find all sorts of things: answers to questions about what your rights are if you’re arrested; can you film the police; freedom of information, how to go about that; all sorts. Solicitors.
INQUEST is listed on there. And so on. And the second part of Red Alert is to set up a regional helpline, 24-hour helpline, a bit like the Samaritans, that families of anyone, black or white, that is detained in police, prison, mental health, immigration, institutions, can call if they’re concerned about their loved one and get advice over the phone, and so on and so forth. So that bit hasn’t been realised yet, but that, Red Alert was set up in Mikey’s name. When I was, before Catalyst came about I worked for National Mind for a while and they were running something in Birmingham called 300 Voices, another one of these initiatives to improve services for African-Caribbean people. And they appointed me to set up an advocacy hub, which I did. And it was called MASH – Mentoring Advocacy Support Hub, but everybody calls it MASH for short. And it was based on four principles that Mikey employed to stay well.
So we had, one of the key features of MASH was a monthly drop-in, a social event. Mikey went to loads of social events and he had lots of connections in that, so that was a replication of that. We provided mentors to people with mental health issues. And again, that was replicating, Mikey had lots of friends, some of them he could talk to about how he felt. So we replicated that in the mentoring programme. Mikey had a job, that kept him well, because he had something to get up for in the morning, right? So we replicated that in, I can’t remember what it was called now, but it was basically we used to, when people registered for MASH, one of the first things we would ask them is what were you doing before you were unwell. And remarkable array of things.
Assistant teachers, running their own companies, all sorts of jobs. And when they got ill it fell to one side, so we worked with them and local colleges to set up bespoke training initiatives to help them to rejuvenate those skills so they could get back into the job market. So… and then the final one was enjoyment, because Mikey liked to enjoy himself, so we used to have trips out to museums, Thorpe Park and all sorts of things, just for the fun of it. So those four elements of Mikey’s survival tactics were re-created in MASH.
