Designing better mental healthcare facilities

Bagpiper leads guests at Derbyshire topping-out

Integrated Health Projects (IHP), the joint venture between VINCI Building and Sir Robert McAlpine, celebrated the topping-out of the Derbyshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust’s new mental health facilities in Chesterfield and Derby early in October.

Mark Powell, CEO of Derbyshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, Simon Corben, Director and Head of Profession for NHS Estates and Facilities at NHS England, and Geoff Neild, Programme director for the Making Room for Dignity Programme, attended the event held at Derby Kingsway Hospital alongside members of the project team.  In a traditional ceremony dating back to the Roman era, a bagpiper led the guests to the rooftop, where IHP Works manager, Mick Murphy, nailed an evergreen bough to the structure, did a symbolic concrete pour, and presented a tankard to Geoff Neild for a ‘job well done’. 

The ‘pioneering’ new mental health facilities are delivered as part of the Trust’s ambitious £150 million Making Room for Dignity Programme – a project using a blend of central, regional, and Trust funding to completely revamp the county’s mental health inpatient (hospital) facilities.  The works include the Derwent Unit, a 54-bed mental health facility for Adult Acute Care at the Chesterfield Royal Hospital, and the Carsington Unit, another 54-bed mental health facility for Adult Acute Care, as well as a 14-bed PICU at Kingsway Hospital in Derby. 

 Every room across both Adult Acute Care facilities will be en-suite and temperature controlled, with the facilities also including a shared therapy suite, kitchen, indoor fitness room, online library resource room, arts room, and access to a secured roof terrace and garden for wards on the first floor. 

Geoff Neild said: “The Derwent Unit at Chesterfield and Carsington Unit at Derby form the backbone of our dormitory eradication programme, giving each service-user their own en-suite bedroom.  For those service users from Derbyshire requiring intensive psychiatric care there is currently no provision within the county, meaning that our service-users are currently placed in out-of-area facilities. This has a huge impact on the ability of family and loved ones to provide support at a time when it is often most needed. Kingfisher House will provide a 14- bedded unit meeting the needs of male service-users in Derbyshire. Along with the newly refurbished Audrey House, the Trust can meet the majority of the needs of both male and female service users requiring high acuity facilities. I am delighted that these new facilities will give staff, service-users, family, and friends, fantastic settings in which to deliver or receive therapeutic care and support.”

 

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