by Shmoun Maqsood


Rahila Mughal, 34-year-old and mother of two from Bradford, whose job is to break down linguistic and cultural barriers, has been appointed as Family Support Worker to the South Asian community to support children and their families with complex needs or palliative requirements, working alongside the Children's Community Team based at Bradford City PCT. It is believed to be the only such post in the UK whose job is to break down linguistic and cultural barriers preventing them from doing so.
A graduate in psychology in her native Pakistan and a fluent speaker of Urdu, Punjabi, Mirpuri and English, Rahila acts as a linguistic and cultural bridge where health professionals believe Asian families may not be accessing services that could help them.
Rahila, who did not know anything about hospices before beginning in post, says: "I am brought in where professionals working with families think families are not making the most of services offered to them. Sometimes the families find it helpful that I am from the same culture and the same ethnicity."
She works with the families of children with cancer and other life-limiting illnesses across the four Bradford PCTs plus Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust and Airedale NHS Trust.
The decision to appoint her in October 2005 was taken after a realisation by health professionals in the Bradford area that many Asian families were not tapping into respite, palliative and continuing care – sometimes for linguistic reasons, in other cases because of cultural barriers or misunderstandings.
Rahilla is very surprised that not many Asians are working as support workers. " I definitely recommend them working in this field as you can make a world of difference to help people who are suffering."
The children's nurse specialist for paediatric palliative care, Liz Lyles, said: "Rahila's post has really opened up the way for us and for everybody involved in having difficult conversations with South Asian parents."