DESIGN IN MENTAL HEALTH 2022
‘Can the difference in the quality of the space create a difference in how somebody might have engaged in therapy and felt from the very outset?’
they weren’t simply going to ‘go away and show their opinion of something’. The new hospital really was ‘co-designed all the way through’.
Building’s ‘flow’ “For example,” Cath Lake explained, “we looked at how that main entrance would look and feel, and the spaces included; if something wasn’t, we added it in. We also looked at how the building would flow, with it very clear that we would have a ‘front of house’, as most hospitals do. We have levels of safety and security we progress through, but we wanted a free- flowing, light, bright, active street that would take us to each of the wards. We looked at the ward layouts, and whether they were different across different parts of the service.” Pointing to a slide showing one potential location for a therapy activity room in the centre of a ward, the speaker said: “Highlighted there, a therapy activity room in that particular location seems daft, but we had that slip more into the centre of the ward environment to start with. Service-users, however, felt the activity room should be really close to the ward’s front door, ‘because when we’re admitted, and come through that door, we want to see that that is the most important thing, and how we are going to be engaged all the way through’. So, we moved the room, and that is one of the first spaces you’ll encounter when you come onto the ward.”
‘Decompression spaces’ for police officers Similarly, Cath Lake explained, with the design of the Place of Safety that Nick Smith was really involved in, there was ‘a huge discussion’ around some of the spaces included, most notably space for decompression for police officers, for
A sketch of how the spaces in the new Bradford inpatient facility might ‘flow’.
instance when they have just brought in somebody detained under Section 136 of the Mental Health Act. She said: “We talked about there being infinite ways to design a ward, and we’d gone to visit a couple of buildings, looking at whether straight lines of sight are the most important thing, or whether space to move away in a conflict is more important. Through discussion, the ability to move away from that potential conflict was deemed more important for both staff and service-users than having straight lines of sight everywhere.”
Space to relax in the aftermath Here Nick Smith re-took the microphone. He said: “Section 136 suites, at both Lynfield Mount and the Airedale Centre for Mental Health (in Keighley), tend to be very near the entrance. When I was sectioned, it took six police officers to pull me out of my house into the back of a van, and take me to hospital. I assaulted two of them, and was charged with some offences during my breakdown in 2010. My point is that I had spat at the officers concerned, and once they dropped me off, I wondered where were they going to go? I thought that if I was a police officer in that situation, I’d feel really awkward and uncomfortable, and would firstly have had to be off work to go and have an HIV test. It must be extremely stressful to have to deal with someone acutely unwell, violent, and exhibiting disgusting behaviour. They need a space or room where they can clean themselves up, have a shower, and – with free Wi- Fi –‘connect’ with their families, and have a drink and chat, i.e. just take their time to get back out there.
Entrances facilitating a ‘transition’ from home to work “It’s really important that the Police have such a space,” Nick Smith continued,
Nick Smith: “Can [staff] please have a private entrance, where they can ‘transition’ from being a wife, husband, mother, or father – just to get in, remove their coat, have a coffee, chill out, take a deep breath, and then go onto the ward?”
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“because they are, after all, people with their own mental health.” He added: “On a different note, I used to cringe when staff came in the front entrance.” The former service-user explained that staff entering the unit this way would often be cajoled or ‘baited’ by service-users even before they had removed their coats or put their car keys in their bag. He said: “Can they please have a private entrance, where they can ‘transition’ from being a wife, husband, mother, or father – just to get in, remove their coat, have a coffee, chill out, take a deep breath, and then go onto the ward in the uniform? They’re then more ‘ready’ – with their battle armour on, and their mind clear – before they go on to the chaos of the ward.” Cath Lake here explained that the team behind the design of a new hospital at Lynfield Mount held a specific workshop with FM and Security staff. She said: “In fact, they told us: ‘No, everybody needs to enter via the front door; that way we can control it.’ We told them, however, that others’ feedback suggested we should be giving time for staff arriving to actually get into the job. They then agreed that this was fine, as long as they could control keys. So, actually, the wellbeing of staff became the most important thing – driven by service-user input, rather than by staff requests. Features such as a private entrance for staff were requested by people like Nick.”
Standing in someone’s else’s shoes With this, Nick Smith and Cath Lake’s presentation came to a close, and session Chair, and former DiMHN Chair, Joe Forster, asked if there were any questions. The Design in Mental Health Network’s Chair, Philip Ross, commented: “It’s not so much a question from me; but rather a ‘thank you’ to Nick. You just gave a really great example of being empathetic with design. It’s the power of placing yourself in other people’s shoes, and how that simple task will make us all make better design decisions. All too often, we make such decisions from the other side of the fence, and we make compromises, knowing there will be consequences. So, thank you.”
n AUGUST 2022 | THE NETWORK
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