Inpatient Facilities
glazing, it is a place that is convivial, social, and, most importantly, shared – bringing together service-users and the wider community.
As Colin Vines put it: “Placing
everything under one roof has provided service-users with continuity, security, and a sense of belonging. The central hub, with its friendly café, helps to destigmatise mental health, allowing users to interact with the general public, and enabling them to safely and confidently translate their therapy into life skills. The café is run by the service-users, and is a focal point to the Oberlands Centre. It is welcoming, but not designed to be overly therapeutic, and has been very successful as an opportune meeting point to improve interactivity.”
IMPROVING THE SERVICE-USER EXPERIENCE
The mental health care pathway can be traumatic at times; the hub-and-spoke design makes the transition between therapies and services more seamless for the service-user, helping to reduce anxiety and supporting a familiar routine. “Our new ‘model of care’ required us to re-skill our staff, improve our care, and enable the staff to manage and run elements of the new building,” Colin Vines explained. “We went on a recruitment drive to employ qualified and non-qualified staff to fill skills gaps, and brought in experts from around the country to teach therapy and risk and recovery techniques to ensure that everyone possessed the same level of knowledge. “The new building has been designed to move us away from a generic approach to mental health. Its plan provides dedicated areas, bringing services-users with similar needs together, and the boost in training has allowed us to meet more intelligently those specific requirements.”
FLEXIBILITY BY DESIGN
The HSSD staff run two wards at the Oberlands Centre, a 10-bed older adult ward and a 16- bed acute ward. These are directly accessed from the main hub, and each ward is planned around a central staff base. The base provides clear views into the day space, but also acts as a hub for service-users to congregate and socialise. “The design has had a very positive impact on the way our nurses engage with our service-users,” Colin Vines explained. “It is
Colin Vines said: “The Oberlands Centre has enabled us to transform our service to focus on rehabilitation and recovery, and provide a more stable environment for our staff and service- users.”
The architects produced a mock-up of the private bedrooms to test the design and achieve robust feedback around risk, functionality, and security.
evident that everyone is spending much more time in the wards because they truly enjoy using the new building, and are respectful of the quality of space.”
The wards were designed with significant stakeholder input, allowing for an open dialogue around the new ‘model of care’ and its application within a realistic environment. We wanted to ensure an optimum solution, and therefore produced a mock-up of the private bedrooms to test the design and achieve robust feedback around risk, functionality, and security. Each space around the staff base offers a degree of flexibility, allowing the facility to react quickly to change. Formed of six zones, these can be opened up, altered, and shut off, to respond to specialist requirements, such as male/female split, bariatric, mother and baby, and eating disorders. In the event of a forensic need, there is an option to isolate the extra care wing as a dedicated standalone unit for holding that client until they can be transferred off- island to an appropriate facility.
“Being located in Guernsey means we have to deal with a vast range of mental health needs that change on a daily basis,” explained Colin Vines. “In response, IBI Group took the time to listen to and challenge our requirements, culminating in a design that optimised flexibility and allowed us to provide the right service at the right time.”
NATURE AND NURTURE
Each ward opens out onto a secured courtyard, with views out onto the rural landscape and beyond. Individual bedroom windows are
‘Its plan provides dedicated areas, bringing services-users with similar needs together’
screened by raised planters containing lavender, to help calm service-users. Raised planters in the courtyards provide allotment space for service-users to encourage rehabilitation. IBI Group and HSSD worked alongside Guernsey Arts Commission (GAC) to create an integrated arts strategy, which also supported the Department’s new ‘model of care’. The team from Guernsey Arts Commission collaborated with service-users to produce a collection of artworks that have been strategically placed around the building. This means that service-users are greeted with familiar objects, reducing anxiety, and inspiring a sense of ownership.
The IBI-led brief focused on ‘nature and
The central hub, with its friendly café, helps to destigmatise mental health, allowing users to interact with the general public.
20 THE NETWORK April 2016
A carefully curated display of service-user artwork enabled the architects to ‘create a sense of order and community’.
nurture’, where it was felt important that service-`users had an increased connection with the outside world. Guernsey Arts Commission worked with local artists to create a set of artworks based around the seasons. These will be replaced over the year, to subliminally provide service users with a sense of time. “Leading up to the opening of the Oberlands Centre, GAC delivered art workshops with service-users from all departments of the new building,” said Lottie Barnes, community arts development manager at Guernsey Arts Commission. “The workshops were devised to increase a sense of wellbeing and relaxation, and the service- users were encouraged to play an active role in the art for the new building. They reported an increased sense of ownership of the space, easing the transition from the service at the Castel Hospital to the new space and
routines at the Oberlands Centre. A carefully curated display of service-user artwork also enabled us to create a sense of order and community, and suggest the possibility of renewal and transformation by expanding on
Photos courtesy of IBI Group/Infinite 3D.
Photos courtesy of IBI Group/Infinite 3D.
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