FEATURE ARTICLES

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.

Safehinge Primera says it worked with architects, clinicians, facilities managers, infection control leads, and other key stakeholders, for 18 months to develop its award-winning Safehinge Symphony en-suite door.

Catherine Helliker, marketing manager at danfloor UK, a specialist manufacturer and supplier of commercial carpet, explains how danfloor helps architects and designers create spaces which are not only fit for purpose aesthetically and practically for service-users, patients, and staff, but are also able to withstand demanding use.

Oxehealth claims to be the world’s first company to offer technology that enables clinicians and carers to monitor human activity and vital signs ‘totally contact-free’ using only mass-produced optical sensors.

The design manager at specialist in electronic water efficiency controls, Dart Valley Systems, describes its approach to manufacturing for mental healthcare and other ‘secure’ applications.

A director at Medical Architecture discusses the imagination, thought, and collaboration that went into the design of a new adult autism inpatient unit at Morpeth’s Northgate Hospital, reportedly the UK’s first building specifically created for this service-user group.

Kent-headquartered Kingsway Group – a DIMHN member which designs and manufactures high quality doorsets, vision panels, and anti-ligature hardware – says it is in business ‘to push limits, challenge thinking, invest, and do what it takes to move safety and design in mental health environments to the next level’. The Network’s editor, Jonathan Baillie, visited the company’s headquarters to find out more about this fast-growing, forward-thinking business from sales director, Julian Hall.