INPATIENT FACILITY DESIGN
One of several features of the CAMHS bedroom designed to impart a sense of ‘ownership’ to service-users was a whiteboard affixed to to the front of the door which they can draw on, and thus personalise. The bedroom door also incorporates Kingsway’s Eclipse vision panel, which uses a film technology to change from opaque to clear.
sat down at that year’s Design in Mental Health event, and decided we’d really like to design an enhanced CAMHS bedroom that properly moved the dial forward, driven by a passion for ensuring that the young people who use mental health services receive the best possible experience. My son and daughter live with the effects of trauma every day. Having mulled around the idea, we talked about it, ‘put it down’, and then got back together and said: ‘If we’re going to do a CAMHS bedroom, we must do it properly. The project needed to involve experts by experience and be a genuine co-production, i.e. something put out to the industry. We stressed to all who visited yesterday: ‘It’s not a Eureka moment’, but rather: ‘We’re on a learning journey with the bedroom – please critique it. Tell us what you like, and what you don’t.’”
Risk of losing ‘more therapeutic’ elements A key consideration in the bedroom’s design was that, with many mental healthcare inpatient schemes starting from
an anti-ligature standpoint, there could be a danger of losing many of the more therapeutic elements. He said: “We thus began by saying: ‘Let’s park anti-ligature, and look at a bedroom’s original purpose – a place of safety, rest, and somewhere you know you can go and unwind and have a place to play, but also that you have ownership of.’ The mental healthcare estate is extremely mixed, and our aim is to promote a conversation that asks: ‘How do we help inform best practice as an industry, and how do we keep this conversation going?’ Yesterday’s open day was the first part. We had a mixture of NHS estates and clinical personnel, architects, experts by experience, and suppliers – including all the partners who have provided elements for the bedroom here – for what proved a very productive day.” Mark Childs explained that whilst
the aforementioned partner companies undertook much of the early work, having agreed the basis of design, they brought in ‘industry experts’ in their specialist areas. “So, for instance,” he said: “we brought in Hygenius and Pineapple Contracts for
furniture, Altro for floors, and the en-suite bathroom wall materials, Wallgate for sanitaryware, Britplas for the Safevent window, and Kingsway for the doors and technology products.”
Ease of involving Experts by Experience With Kingsway having established expert by experience contacts over the years, and with Mark now a DiMHN Associate, securing initial feedback on the bedroom design was not too difficult. He and his team also attend key industry events, and Kingsway has held regular Design Review Panels for some time. He said: “We thus work regularly and strategically with experts by experience (EBEs), including as part of our new product development (NPD), and on the CAMHS bedroom project we are actively working with EBEs to keep checking back with them that we are using the optimal products and technologies for those living in these environments. The new premises is our global facility for innovation, with our NPD team based here, as well as our finance, sales, production, operations, and marketing functions. In Madison Heights, Michigan, we also have a sales, operations, finance, and production team, but the core elements, such as the innovation and IP, are developed here, and we then work with the local markets to ensure that what we’re producing is right for them.” Kingsway Group is seeing growing
One of first things one notices on entering the bedroom is a semi-circular ‘refuge’ alcove – here a service-user can retreat and feel ‘invisible’ from the door when they need space. Service-users can change the colour of the lighting in the bedroom and en-suite bathroom, and adjust its brightness to suit their mood or the time of day.
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business in in the US and North America, and in addition to several satellite offices across the UK, and the Michigan facility, has bases in Canada and Australia. Mark Childs said: “Although we are seeing many similarities in demand, the US market is on a different part in its trajectory in relation to the UK’s. Kingsway, and a number of other companies, are pioneering work in improving the behavioural health space in America. Mental health is absolutely our core market, but we also supply custodial facilities. Unfortunately, there are a number of people held in UK prisons who would be in mental healthcare facilities given greater bed capacity.
NOVEMBER 2024 | THE NETWORK
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