PRIMARY CARE FACILITIES
‘Cognitively inclusive’ toolkit aiming to get design right
Sarah Waller CBE, an Associate Specialist at the Association for Dementia Studies, University of Worcester, and her colleague, Research assistant, Jennifer Bray, discuss the development, launch, and thinking behind a new ‘toolkit’ designed to help primary care facilities improve the physical environment for all patients – including neurodiverse individuals.
The Designing for Everyone toolkit has been developed to help GP practices and health centres improve their buildings and the physical environment of care for all patients, and particularly those who are living with dementia, learning disabilities, autism, or cognitive impairment. It is believed to be the first integrated resource of its kind to focus specifically on design principles to support those who are neurodiverse or have conditions like anxiety. There is a growing body of evidence
The Full Environmental Assessment Tool, which includes information on environmental changes that may be required during a pandemic, will be used to inform the design of new builds and major refurbishments.
to indicate that appropriate design of the environment across a range of settings can promote independence, quality of life, and wellbeing, for older people in general, and in particular for those living with dementia.1
Until relatively recently
however, less attention has been given to the possibility of developing supportive design for people living with other neurodiverse conditions that cause sensory processing difficulties. Neurodiversity is a term
increasingly being used to describe people whose brain operates differently from that of a neurotypical individual in respect of sociability, learning, attention, mood, and other mental functions. It describes a wide cluster of people estimated at 20% of the population with different presentations linked to neurological origins – including dementia, autism, attention deficit, and hyperactivity disorders, Asperger’s syndrome, dyslexia, dyspraxia, and Tourette Syndrome,
The tools and guides have been designed for use in any health centre.
as well as people with complex needs and mental health conditions that differ from that of a ‘neurotypical’ individual. ‘Neurodiverse’ therefore describes individuals rather than a specific condition, but currently there is no standard definition of either the neurodegenerative or neurodivergent conditions that should be included in the umbrella term, ‘neurodiversity’. The British Standards Institute’s Publicly Available Specification (PAS), Design for the Mind. Neurodiversity and the built environment, makes it clear that it does not focus on one condition, difficulty, or difference, recognising the diversity of human brains and that each is unique.2
The design of primary care premises GP surgery and primary care premises (collectively hereinafter ‘health centres’) are the gateway to wider NHS services where, pre-pandemic, over 300 million patient consultations took place annually. Many of these premises are known to be far from ideal, particularly for an ageing and increasingly diverse population, yet there is little freely available advice on good design for people living with dementia in this setting.3 Assura plc develops, invests in,
June 2024 Health Estate Journal 51
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