INTERACTIVE COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY
offers opportunities to people who have lost control and are in a crisis in their search for recovery. Social and emotional support, de-escalating, and having access to their own photos, videos etc, via a software platform can help speed recovery and prevent relapse. We at Recornect developed the CoWin media wall based on this recovery vision. In an innovative and effective way, it enables self-management to be returned to the person undergoing treatment. Looking at coping styles and character traits leads to the formation of a solution strategy which constructively contributes to the recovery: naturally this has to be framed in the right way, and to be appropriate for the solution skills of the person in crisis.
New options for care workers The Recornect CoWin media wall helps clinical and nursing teams in mental healthcare provide the right care without removing the service-user’s self- management and independence, or undermining their self-worth and potential. Equally, the media wall supports service- users’ efforts to help themselves during a mental health crisis. Where nursing or other care staff have to ‘back off’ if things become too intense, the CoWin takes over. Even in the most severe phase of their crisis, the person being treated can retain self-management and a degree of control with the help of the media wall. Supported by the care worker, they have appropriate access to their own solutions in the form of personalised apps. Clinicians and nurses can narrow down the number of apps accessible if required, and then restore access once the service-user has regained some equilibrium. Several qualitative research studies have established that the apps are seen as a constructive tool in an individual’s self-management and recovery – by both service-users and healthcare staff. Use of the media walls can also positively influence the duration and quality of care during a possible confinement.
Media walls at Rowan View Mersey Care regards the Recornect media walls – which are installed in the seclusion rooms at the new facility – as one of the major innovations in secure care at Rowan View. Joey Dunn, a senior nurse in the secure unit there, has years of experience in mental healthcare, and is at the forefront of facilitating the technological innovation which is fundamental to the Rowan View care model. He says: “We strive to restrict the time spent in seclusion rooms to a minimum. The media walls ensure that in instances where we have to use such rooms, service-users don’t become disenfranchised. Our therapists and clinicians will use the media walls to keep communicating with service-users during their stay in the seclusion rooms, to help people out of their seclusion as quickly as possible. They also help staff make more objective decisions on duration and necessity of stay in such rooms.”
THE NETWORK | JULY 2020
Mersey Care
Mersey Care is ‘a hugely successful and highly rated’ NHS Foundation Trust. For many people locally, it remains primarily known for running Ashworth High Secure Hospital in Maghull, 10 miles north of Liverpool city centre. In recent years Mersey Care has effectively doubled in size, acquiring two other NHS Trusts, and now supporting people in community settings, as well as delivering secure and specialist learning disability care. It works from 124 sites across Merseyside and beyond. The national health regulator, the Care Quality Commission, last regulated the whole organisation as ‘Good’ in all its domains, and ‘Outstanding’ in its leadership. The secure forensic learning disability services were last assessed as ‘Outstanding’.
Situated at the heart of Mersey Care’s recently established Maghull Health Park, the new £48 million Rowan View medium secure facility, combining secure mental healthcare provision with learning disability care, will be completed this month as a 123-bed medium secure hospital. Mersey Care says that with 78 beds for mental ill health, and provision for 45 beds for learning disabilities, it represents ‘a massive step change in care’ for its client groups.
Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust chair, Beatrice Fraenkel, sits in the cabin as the first sod is cut for Rowan View in April 2018. Dr Frank McGuire is pictured third from the left with senior clinicians, Estates leads, and contractors.
Better service information provision
Joey Dunn adds: “The media walls work like a giant iPad, with touchscreen technology to provide the user with the right service information at an appropriate moment. Radio, television, games, photos, music, and telephone facilities, can all be made available on the media walls. In addition, they enable contact with, and support from, the service- user’s family, even when the individual is in a more acute stage of their illness. Even online shopping, banking services, and nutritional advice, geared to their needs and capacities, can be made available.” When used carefully, the media walls form a valuable step towards reintegration into the community, and life outside the care institution, which is central to the current national policy on secure care.
Link to Trust’s own systems The media walls at Rowan View are linked to the Trust’s own IT systems. All information on the service-user can be accessed wherever and whenever it is needed. However, the ethos is for service- user to be able to get the best out of using the devices, tailored to their particular needs. “This is about not disenfranchising them when they need to be apart,” Joey
Dunn stressed. “Rather, it’s part of the Trust’s wider strategy of reducing restrictive practices.”
Promising initial experience The media walls represent a huge upgrade in the range of the care model. They form a permanent and sustainable change in the care that service-users can expect within secure care. Just as in the wider concept of the Maghull Health Park, this is about making the exceptional ‘normal’, and transforming the service-user environment within secure care. The media walls form a symbolic, and also an extremely visual, representation of what Mersey Care wants for its service-users on their therapeutic journey.
Helping vulnerable people recover Recornect’s innovative systems and technology are geared to helping vulnerable people in a crisis situation recover, and to restore ‘contact’, both with themselves and others. Maintaining such contact is the key both to a faster recovery, and a better working relationship between vulnerable individuals and their care workers. Importantly, it can also prevent a mental health crisis lasting longer than it needs to.
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©Mersey Care
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