Youth Work: Support services overlook needs of young Muslims, saysstudy

The report, Providing Faith and Culturally Sensitive Services to Young British Muslims is based on interviews with more than 5,000 helpline callers. It says the top two issues for users of the helpline in 2006 were relationships and mental health.

Concerns about relationships included marriage, divorce and relationships between boys and girls, with worries about forced marriage totalling nearly seven per cent of calls.

In the mental health category 35 per cent of callers wanted to talk about anxiety and stress. Depression, self-harm and suicidal feelings were the next most common concerns.

The report says mainstream services are inappropriate for young Muslims because they do not take into account cultural and religious beliefs. It also says many young Muslims believe British society misrepresents Islam.

However, the helpline's callers stopped short of demanding completely "faith-based" services, instead calling for faith-sensitive support that could be adapted to individual needs.

Religion, offending and rehabilitation, and sexuality and sexual health were also common concerns. The majority of calls in the sexuality category related to lesbian, gay and bisexual concerns, followed closely by calls about pregnancy and abortion.

Mohammed Imran, director of the Muslim Youth Helpline, said the evidence should be used to inform the training of local health authority workers. "We now have hard non-anecdotal evidence, we can use this to provide client-led information," he says.

The report urges policy makers to put aside government guidelines on cohesion and integration in favour of supporting community-led initiatives that meet young Muslims' needs.

The recommendations also call on Muslim communities to raise awareness of the sociological and psychological issues facing young British Muslims.

- www.myh.org.uk.