Sensing the strengths, identifying the weaknesses

The third in a series of successful Design in Mental Health annual events to be held since 2013, and, as with the first two, organised by Step Exhibitions in conjunction with the Design in Mental Health Network, Design in Mental Health 2015 was held at the National Motorcycle Museum in Solihull from 19-20 May. The event combined a two-day conference, an exhibition featuring over 50 organisations ranging from product suppliers to art consultancies, and an Awards Dinner, held at the National Motorcycle Museum on the evening of the first day. This year’s theme was Delivering Recovery Through Innovative Environments, and, to ensure as broad a range of perspectives as possible on how mental healthcare buildings can be designed to provide a more therapeutic, fit-for-purpose environment, conference speakers ranged from designers and architects, to senior clinicians, estates and facilities personnel, managers of mental healthcare facilities, academics, and service-users.

Before the conference speeches began, Design in Mental Health Network chair, Jenny Gill, an experienced healthcare planner herself, welcomed a sizeable gathering of delegates drawn from the architectural and design community, the NHS and private healthcare sectors, and the service-user community. She said it was ‘wonderful to see so many people who are deeply caring about mental health services and the environments from which we deliver them’ at the event. The conference’s opening keynote was then given by John Short, chief executive of the Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust since April 2013. Having begun his career as a mental health social worker with local authorities, he subsequently worked in a number of different settings before moving into mental health services management in the NHS over 20 years ago. Working for several Trusts, he has held posts including senior manager, Mental Health Services, at the West Midlands Regional Office, director of Mental Health and Learning Disability Services at Shropshire Mental Health and Community Trust and Shropshire PCT, COO at Cheshire and Wirral Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, and director, Change Programmes, and chief operating officer, of the Leicestershire Partnership NHS Trust. His first CEO post was as interim CEO of the Leicestershire Partnership Trust, a role he held from 2011 until his appointment to the CEO role in Birmingham and Solihull in 2013.

John Short explained that he planned to share some of his own personal reflections on design and quality in mental healthcare settings, and to ‘set some challenges’ for those designing and building such facilities, and equally those caring for the mentally unwell. Having worked in mental health services since 1981, he had encountered some of the large asylums, many no longer fit-for-purpose for providing 21st century care. “Since then,” he acknowledged, “I have seen a great many changes to mental healthcare facilities, most for the better. I frequently visit inpatient facilities, and, as a CEO of a sizeable mental healthcare Trust, still make at least one unannounced visit to such a unit every week. Once a quarter, I spend a day in a mental healthcare unit somewhere else in the country, often just getting a feel for what makes a good, and indeed a bad, unit.” This experience, he said, meant that ‘within the first 30 seconds’ of walking onto an unfamiliar unit, he could usually form a view of whether it was providing good care.