FEATURE ARTICLES

Glasgow-based camper-van conversion firm, Caledonian Campers, has undertaken what designer and manufacturer of specialist thermostatic mixing valves, showers, and taps, Horne Engineering, dubs an ‘outstanding bespoke conversion’, to create a special ‘Show Van’, in which it can demonstrate its product range to hospital engineers and facilities management staff, infection prevention and specialist care staff, architects, consulting engineers, and FM providers.

The Design in Mental Health Network’s Innovation & Testing Workstream says that following last summer’s workshops for estates and facilities, design personnel, and manufacturers, followup such events for clinical staff held in the past 3-4 months have provided further valuable feedback towards the DiMHN’s and BRE’s joint development of formal guidance for testing of some of the most widely used products in mental healthcare settings.

Matt Tebbatt, managing director of Midlands-headquartered multidisciplinary building design company, One Creative Environments (One), discusses the company’s work designing the Falklands Islands’ first ever purpose-built Vulnerable Extra Care Facility. Alongside this, One also designed the first phase of the redevelopment of the Islands’ only acute hospital.

Paul Pope, head of System Integration and Technical Support at Apollo Fire Detectors, highlights the challenges associated with fire detection in mental health facilities, and explains how the latest detection technology is helping to overcome them.

Bedfordshire-based Stafford Bridge is best-known as a supplier of high security blast and ballistic-resistant door and window products.

Liberal Democrat MP, Norman Lamb, Minister of State for Care and Support at the Department of Health from September 2012 to May 2015, and a committed campaigner on mental health, will be among the keynote speakers at May’s Design in Mental Health 2019 conference in Coventry.

DiMHN director, Russell Hogarth, and Nigel Farnworth, manager of the Creative Communities Group UK, and two community members, recently visited Brussels to spread word of CCGUK’s work and strengthen bonds with key European community learning organisations.

Designplan Lighting, a ‘pioneer in robust LED lighting’, has recently developed a ‘Tuneable White’ version of its Basilica LED luminaire – designed to help regulate service-users’ circadian rhythms.

Trudi Beswick, CEO of Caudwell Children, describes the meticulous thought that has gone into the design and construction of the new Caudwell International Children’s Centre.

The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) in Toronto was the subject of a presentation, ‘You’ve Changed’, at May’s Design in Mental Health 2018 conference.

Exeter-based Grainge Architects was last summer appointed to design one of four new Mother & Baby Units commissioned by the NHS in England to allow women needing mental healthcare to stay with their babies while receiving the care they need.

Philip Ross, a DIMHN Board member who leads the Network’s Testing & Innovation stream, reports on the ongoing joint work by the DIMHN and the Building Research Establishment (BRE) to develop and launch product testing standards for some of the key products used in mental healthcare settings.

Giving a keynote speech at Design in Mental Health 2018, NHS England’s national clinical director for Mental Health reported on progress made, and goals yet to be met, on mental health provision in England in line with the Five Year Forward View for Mental Health.

In an opening session at May’s DIMH 2018 conference, leads and members of the DIMHN workstreams outlined the goals of their workstream, and some of the ambitious and potentially far-reaching activities that each is undertaking.

This year’s Design in Mental Health Awards celebrated excellence in six categories, and saw an impassioned after-dinner speech by Dr Jacqui Dillon, an activist, writer, and speaker, who suffered childhood abuse, and now lectures worldwide on trauma, abuse, psychosis, dissociation, and healing.

Ensuring that staff using staff attack alarms are well trained, urging mental healthcare providers to better communicate with each other, and encouraging strengthening of guidance and standards.

Director of award-winning design and manufacturing company Safehinge Primera, Philip Ross, discusses Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, and Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust’s goals for a ‘zero suicide rate’ in mental health facilities, and ‘how the role of the built environment and staff training can be part of the solution’.

As the provider of the widest range of NHS mental health services in the UK, South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust takes the safety of staff and patients very seriously.

A key theme at next month’s Design in Mental Health 2018 event will be the need for more clinical evidence that ‘interventions’ that impact patient space actually aid recovery.

A mental healthcare charity first established almost 70 years ago by Anna Freud is soon to re-locate from various ageing residential properties to a new purpose-built facility.