RECENT NEWS

Current mental health spending would likely need to double to take the number of people with mental health problems receiving NHS treatment from 40 per cent to 70 per cent, according to a new funding report.

People with dementia and a supporter were able to work together with design experts to learn the skills needed to become more involved in the process of designing dementia inclusive environments at what is claimed to have been the world’s first design school for people with dementia, held at Birmingham’s Crowne Plaza Hotel last month.

The VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland and the Metropolia University of Applied Sciences in Helsinki are collaborating with industrial partners to investigate opportunities to extend integration of visually attractive solar modules into the architecture of building façades.

NHS Shared Business Services (NHS SBS) launched on 1 April a new Construction Consultancy Services Framework, which it says is expected to save the public sector some £16 million over the next four years.

Tovertafel (meaning ‘Magic Table’ in Dutch), a system that projects interactive light animations onto any table to create games for people with moderate to severe dementia and adults with severe learning disabilities, ‘to encourage them to instinctively participate to stimulate both physical and social activity’, is now available in the UK.

With terrorist threats ever-present and increasing, the JLC Group has developed its own-design and manufactured ‘blast enhanced’ sliding door systems, which it says ‘are 30% larger than other comparable systems, for higher traffic levels’.

Healthcare furniture specialist, Teal, has welcomed Vicky Taylor to its LifeCare Team as Interior Solutions manager for the Northern Region, as it looks to strengthen its focus not only on challenging environments, but also on consultative design.

Cygnet Hospital Harrogate is a long-established mental health hospital that provides support and treatment for both NHS and privatelyfunded patients.

Mental Health lead at architectural and design practice, IBI Group, Wendy de Silva, has questioned why Post-Occupancy Evaluations (POEs) are not more commonplace, and called for the mental health sector ‘to join the dots’ and develop a forum in which the results of POEs can be shared.

Despite over a third (34 per cent) having direct experience with bipolar disorder, 50 per cent of the British public couldn’t correctly identify the condition in Rethink Mental Illness research undertaken in the run-up to this year’s World Bipolar Day on 31 March.

Vulnerable patients with mental health conditions are being ‘badly let down by the NHS’, causing them and their families ‘needless suffering and distress’, a Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman report, Maintaining momentum; driving improvements in mental healthcare, published in March, suggests.

‘Safety is the number one focus’ at a new £7.2 m, 26-bedded acute adult inpatient mental health unit, Manannan Court, recently completed on the Isle of Man, says Teal Furniture, which has supplied the facility with a range of specialist furniture – including chairs, tables, and sofas.

The Department of Health says the £15 m fund it launched late last year to better support people at risk of experiencing a mental health crisis – the ‘Beyond Places of Safety’ scheme – will improve support services for those needing urgent and emergency mental healthcare, including for conditions such as psychosis, bipolar disorder, and personality disorders that could cause people to be a risk to themselves or others.

South West London and St George’s Mental Health NHS Trust (SWLSTG) has selected a preferred bidder to work alongside it to progress its Estate Modernisation Programme (EMP).

Research released last month by mental health charity, Mind, reveals serious problems with the planning around discharging people from mental health hospitals.

International design and technology practice, IBI Group, is collaborating with Hugh Baird College and Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust to design a ‘pioneering’ Health, Engagement, and Training Hub that will promote positive health and wellbeing in Bootle, Liverpool.

The Design in Mental Health Network (DIMHN) has recently made a few changes to its workstreams.

Kingsway Group says it is delighted to have been selected by the ProCure22 framework as the only mental health specialist doorset provider for the scheme.

York City Council has approved an application for a new 72-bed mental health hospital for adults and older persons on the city’s Haxby Road, expected to be completed in 2019.

Scenes from everyday life typical to the surrounding area, including of seagulls, the sea, and people eating fish and chips – all ‘recalling the joys of the outdoors of South Tyneside and South Shields’ – are captured in a range of illustrations introduced by art and design consultancy, Art in Site, into Haven Court, an integrated care hub in South Shields that supports elderly people’s health and wellbeing.