NEWS COVER STORY
Kitchen design for challenging environments NETWORK
Historically, the focus in furniture for challenging environments has been on bedrooms and communal areas – the elements of care settings with the biggest profile as regards safety considerations or therapeutic interventions. However, in many mental health/learning disability care settings, there is often an equally strong case for specialist furniture in the kitchen area. This month’s cover shows a marketing reproduction of Tough Furniture’s standardised kitchen for challenging environments, which the company has been delivering to, and installing in, private homes, step-down accommodation, and assisted living environments, for over 10 years. Key factors in the design and manufacture of specialist kitchen furniture include: l Infection control – the use of wipe-clean materials such as melamine-faced MDF, and antibacterial coatings, can have a big impact here.
www.dimhn.org Journal of the Design in Mental Health Network
tamper-resistant fixings, inset handles, and reinforced joints.
l Locks – questions of agency and freedom clearly apply, but depending on the clinical diagnosis of the end-user, it’s certainly beneficial to have the option of applying locks to all units.
Positive impact of integrated art Expert view on forensic mental healthcare
Empowering service-users to aid recovery November 2023
l Consultation and flexibility – Furniture manufacturers are experts on furniture, not mental health or learning disabilities. Thus the ability to work with experts by experience, care providers, and OTs to ensure the final product matches, as closely as possible, the end-user’s specific needs, is key. Here bespoke design and manufacturing capabilities are invaluable.
Tough Furniture Ltd, 5 Stokewood Road, Craven Arms Business Park, Shropshire SY7 8NR T: 01588 674340
l Resilience to tampering – Robust manufacturing materials,
www.toughfurniture.com E:
sales@toughfurniture.com Open days just ‘the start of a conversation’
This autumn, BRE’s Science Park in Watford hosted two open days focused on Informed Choices, the new global testing guide for ligature reduction and robustness in mental health environments. A wide range of NHS colleagues,
architects, and specifiers for mental health buildings attended to better understand how they could apply for, and benefit from, the new guidance and subsequent certification scheme. Informed Choices has come a long way in its seven-year journey from idea to reality. DiMHN CEO, Hannah Chamberlain, said: “The work of collating and sense- checking specialist knowledge across our network has led to 150 people participating in workshops, 38 contributing commercial companies, and 14 NHS Trusts and Scottish Boards inputting into the process of creating a certification scheme that can be tested against.”
Call to 2023 AGM
Notice is hereby given that the Annual General Meeting of Design in Mental Health Limited will be held on the 16 day of November 2023. The meeting will convene at 13:00, and will be held virtually. Under section 324 of the Companies Act 2006, and article 19 of the Articles of Association of the Design in Mental Health Ltd., a member who may not be able to attend in person may appoint a proxy. To attend the meeting please register on Eventbrite (
https://DIMHN-AGM23.eventbrite.com) by 5 pm on 15 November 2023; the joining information will be included in your confirmation email. AGM Papers 2023 – please be advised that the Board papers for this meeting are available via
admin@dimhn.org
THE NETWORK | NOVEMBER 2023 The open days at BRE’s Science Park
provided an opportunity for the DiMHN and BRE to present the scheme, find out what questions it raises, and gather feedback as part of a wider education piece for specifiers and NHS colleagues. As Hannah Chamberlain said in her presentation: “This is the start of a conversation. The more we get people talking about the standard, the more we can facilitate people sharing best practice on the optimal specification for different use cases. We aren’t clinicians, but we want to support clinical teams and health and safety to use the standard to make the best product choices.” BRE plans hosting open days
regularly, and encouraging people to register their interest in attending future sessions. The demonstrations of the labs were well received by the attendees, who remarked on the rigour of the testing, and the engineers’ expertise. The first open day saw a film crew present to capture attendee feedback. “Seeing the range of ligature testing was
fascinating, said Nick Todd, head of Capital Projects, Iris Care Group. “I’ve been out with commissioners before with what they called their little bag of ligatures – a credit card, a shoelace, and a pair of ladies’ tights. To see it done in a testing lab with science was a lot better than us attempting to do it ourselves.” “It’s important to have standards because I don’t think the mental health sphere has had a lot in the past, and it just gives you some certainty that what you are specifying will be fit for purpose,” said Damian O’Hanlon, Capital Projects manager, Leeds and York Partnership NHS Foundation Trust. Hannah Chamberlain added: “During a Q&A session after the labs tour, many attendees expressed the need for the
community to come to consensus and begin exchanging best practice. There are opportunities opening for further presentation and best practice sharing, and the webinars will open in January for further collaboration. In the meantime, the number of organisations signing the pledge to require certification from their suppliers continues to grow, as the certification scheme and its application become part of the parlance of safety and risk reduction in the mental health built environment.” Laura Critien, Certification Team manager
at the BRE, summed up the day: “We were delighted to welcome so many people to the BRE campus to observe our world-leading testing. Together with DiMHN, we have developed a world-leading standard for the Informed Choices scheme. We look forward to continued cooperation to keep some of the most vulnerable people in our society safe.” To sign up for more information, visit
https://dimhn.org/informed-choices/
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THE
Photos used courtesy of BRE
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