RECENT NEWS

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.

The Door & Hardware Federation (dhf) is emphasising the increasing importance of Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) to the construction industry – and particularly to architects, builders, and specifiers.

Mental health providers should adopt quality improvement to improve patient care, a new King’s Fund publication, The Quality improvement in mental health report, argues.

Construction has started on the new €160 million National Forensic Mental Health Hospital in Portrane, County Dublin, designed by Scott Tallon Walker Architects in collaboration with Medical Architecture, and scheduled to open in early 2020.

East Kent Hospitals University NHS Foundation Trust, Kent County Council, and partners across east Kent and Europe, have secured ‘significant European funding’ for a ‘dementia village’ to be built near the former Buckland Hospital site in Dover.

Humber NHS Foundation Trust has applied for planning permission for a new multimillion pound mental health inpatient unit for children and young people in Hull.

NHS Property Services (NHSPS) has launched a ‘vacant space handback scheme’ to help NHS commissioners cut the cost of empty space in their buildings.

In a recently published Care Quality Commission report following a comprehensive threeyear inspection of all specialist mental health services in England – rating services provided by 54 NHS Trusts and 221 independent mental health locations – inspectors express concerns about ‘the poor physical environment of many mental health wards’.

Nottinghamshire Healthcare has officially opened a 16-bedded ward for adult mental health patients to ensure they can be treated closer to home, with the beds subcontracted from Priory Healthcare and Partnerships in Care in a two year-deal.

Dorset is now ‘home to one of the leading inpatient mental health services for young people in the country’, says the Dorset Children and Adolescent Mental Health Team (CAMHS), based at Pebble Lodge, Bournemouth, and run by Dorset HealthCare.

A pledge to treat an extra one million mental health patients by 2020/2021, provide ‘seven day-a-week, 24-hour-a-day’ services, and ‘integrate mental and physical health services for the first time’, were the highlights of a new plan unveiled this summer by Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt.