NEWS
New North Manchester mental health unit name unveiled
On the NHS’s 74th Anniversary (5 July), Greater Manchester Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust (GMMH) announced that the name of its major new inpatient mental health unit to be constructed at North Manchester General Hospital will be ‘North View’. The Trust said marking the NHS’s birthday
by unveiling the name for the £105.9 m adult inpatient unit was ‘a significant milestone’. Work on the new building – which will
replace the current Park House mental health inpatient unit – is expected to start this month, with the new unit anticipated to be built and operational by late 2024. The choice of name follows engagement with staff, service-users, and stakeholders. Neil Thwaite, the Trust’s CEO, said: “In deciding on a name we wanted to choose something that would stand the test of time, and celebrate our location in North Manchester. The name provides a strong sense of place, and was inspired by the Lemn
Sissay poem, ‘Anthem of the North’, whose imagery resonates with our ethos of care, resilience, hope, and growth. “We’re very much looking
forward to moving into the new North View development. Not only does a modern, therapeutic environment help us improve the quality of specialist inpatient mental healthcare, but the design has been carefully thought through to enhance what we do. The 150 bed spaces are in single rooms with en-suite bathrooms. There are indoor and outdoor amenity and activity areas with multiple outside garden spaces, space for artwork, meeting spaces, and a café for all to enjoy.” The new building will open in Autumn
2024, and forms part of the New Hospital Programme, and the creation of a new ‘sustainable health campus’ at North Manchester General Hospital.
Return visit celebrates friendships
DiMHN Chair Emeritus, Joe Forster, was recently among the guests at a ‘nostalgic visit’ to the Park House development at the North Manchester General Hospital site, where the remaining workhouse structures are being demolished to make way for a modern replacement facility, North View (see also The Network, May 2022, above, and pages 11-19 and 26-30). Greater Manchester Mental Health Trust
recently hosted retired Nurse manager, Andy Palmer, and his wife, Nuala, at the site. Andy had emigrated to Canada after being involved in the design of the existing mental health unit, which opened in 1990. On a return visit, he and Nuala joined Andy’s former colleague, Joe Forster; their healthcare careers began together in the mid-Victorian blocks once the Manchester Union Workhouse, and later Springfield Hospital. They both moved elsewhere. Many of the old buildings pre-dating the unit that opened in 1990 – some built in the mid-1800s – were demolished, re-used for non-clinical purposes, or left vacant. Services relocated to what was then the new-build on site, Park House. The Trust’s associate director of
Operations, Deborah Goodman, met Joe Forster and Andy Palmer in the former dormitory of an admission ward, now the project headquarters. She said: “The current Park House is a difficult place to deliver good 21st century mental healthcare. Most bedrooms are dormitories, with little space for service- users or staff. The new inpatient unit will have wards with fewer beds, and all single bedrooms with en-suite bathrooms. There
THE NETWORK | AUGUST 2022
will be therapeutic indoor and outdoor space, on- and off-ward, a café, and family visiting rooms. Service-user privacy and dignity are being afforded the highest priority in all elements of the build.” Andy Palmer said: “My career saw me
take leadership roles in my preferred specialty of those living with a severe and persistent mental illness, following the principles of psychosocial rehabilitation. Then the recovery philosophy became a complete game-changer for the entire mental health world, with individuals as equal partners setting their own primary goals. Springfield remains very close to my heart – mostly because of the people I met, had the opportunity to work with, and became friends with. It has been wonderful to reconnect”. DiMHN and London South Bank
University jointly propose researching patient and staff lived experience during this scheme, using Virtual Reality to investigate the neuro-psychological impact of the environmental change. Pictured – left to right – are: Andy
Palmer, Joe Forster, and Nuala Palmer, during their visit.
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Planning approval for new-build Highgate facility
Hunters Architects’ healthcare team has won planning permission for a new Mental Health Crisis Assessment Service (MHCAS) for the Camden and Islington NHS Foundation Trust. The designs for the new innovative mental health service at Highgate Mental Health Centre reflect the client’s year-long co-production work with service-users, carers, staff, and other local stakeholders, collaborating on the design of the new hospital building and the spaces within it. The new facility will be a two-storey
new-build, positioned between heritage buildings, and is partly extended over an existing single-storey building. The architects say this creates a sufficiently large first floor to accommodate all the key clinical adjacencies required for the Trust’s service, together with a courtyard garden, ‘to engender a relaxed and calming ambience for patients experiencing a mental health crisis’. The new-build scheme is part of the wider strategic plan to move mental health crisis facilities out of hospital A&E departments and into appropriate specialist care facilities. Tim Ashton, director of the Healthcare
team at Hunters, said: “We worked closely with the Trust on a challenging site to maximise footprint for its needs, while creating a calm new environment for its patients. This is one of a number of mental health schemes we are designing in a sector which is at the forefront of everyone’s minds currently.”
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