CAMHS FACILITIES


Figure 1: To get more insight and perspective into what young people perceived as healthy/calming/appropriate spaces, workshops were held at Cottingham High School and Sixth Form. Pictured are some of the resulting output sketches.


supportive neighbourhood, that benefits from long-standing community leadership from The Goodwin Trust, who are committed to the improvement in quality of life of young people and adults. The location is within easy walking distance of Hull city centre, with outstanding transport links and amenities, as well as in close proximity to the local acute hospital. The Trust’s clinical model was centred around four key facets, which informed the design throughout, i.e. around the delivery of: l Access – a responsive service delivered from an excellent location.


l Choice – shared decision-making involving young people in all decisions about them.


l Participation – keeping young people’s voices at the centre of the design and delivery of service.


l Transition –working closely with children’s and adult services.


The brief


The brief was for accommodation that included nine general CAMHS service bedrooms, and four PICU (psychiatric intensive care unit) bedrooms, all en-suite, with supporting ward spaces, including: l A lounge. l A dining area. l An ADL kitchen. l An ADL laundry. l A treatment and dispensing room. l A staff office. l A quiet room.


Further therapy ‘on-ward’ spaces to be provided included a multi-purpose room, an activity room, a gaming room, a sensory room, an Extra Care area (ECA), school, tribunal, and meeting rooms, a gym, multi- faith room, family visit room, interview room, reception area, facility management rooms, a central kitchen, and support office spaces. The Inspire project entailed not just a new-build CAMHS inpatient facility, but also the renovation and refurbishment of the derelict Children’s Centre Building on the same site. The Trust-owned building had been left derelict following severe flood damage from a tidal surge in 2013, and had significant backlog maintenance issues. Initial feasibility studies looked to demolish the building, but after extensive option appraisal work with the Trust’s Estates team, a new vision was formed that


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Figure 2: An ‘activity book’ was used to help facilitate the workshops.


incorporated the existing building within the new masterplanning for the site, and indeed made the building part of the Trust’s wider Estates strategy. As such, the existing building was incorporated into the overall design approach, and would ultimately share a common new main entrance atrium with the CAMHS unit. Following extensive remodelling and remedial works, the building has now been ‘reborn’ as the Walker Street Centre, and is home to the Trust’s CAMHS Service Community teams and Outpatients’ service.


Intensive service-user engagement Intensive service-user engagement early on in the process helped inform the design direction, with key themes around use, function, space, and feel, captured in


workshops and output sketches (Fig 1). To gain more insight and perspective as to what young people perceived as healthy/ calming/appropriate spaces, workshops were held at the nearby Cottingham High School and Sixth Form, with 25 pupils across design technology/engineering courses in year 10 attending. The students were briefed for the day to develop options and ideas for the new CAMHS unit. An activity book (Fig 2) was used to help facilitate the workshops, as well as virtual reality living areas created to give the spaces context.


The site


The site for the new CAMHS unit is located in a residential area, close to the centre of Hull; this was intentional, and a key part of addressing the brief, i.e. for the new unit to be within the community it serves. Across the road from the site are two three-storey blocks of flats accompanied by two tall tower blocks. Addressing privacy and ‘overlooking’ in the design were thus vital. A key challenge was to also make the new CAMHS unit fit seamlessly within the local community, and co-exist in a non- institutional, symbiotic, and harmonious way.


The site itself has two distinct areas. The northern half features the old Children’s Centre and Sunshine House, and the southern half is an empty green space. The Children’s Centre is a single-storey building


Figure 3: Design factors and influences within the existing site context. JANUARY 2021 | THE NETWORK


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