CAMHS bedroom’s positive initial feedback

I met with Mark Childs — who joined Kingsway Group two and half years ago, and is a passionate advocate of the impact of good design on mental health — in a well-appointed boardroom adjacent to the new CAMHS bedroom on the second floor of the company's impressive Sidcup headquarters. The business's 100+ staff moved to the new building, close to the M25, from their former base just a few miles south in early 2024, having outgrown the previous premises, and needing both additional production and storage space and larger offices to accommodate the various head office functions.

Mark Childs had explained before we met that he was particularly keen to discuss the development of the new Co-production CAMHS bedroom collaboration, and indeed the day before our meeting, Kingsway Group, along with the collaboration partners, had held the first of several planned open days at which a mix of experts-by-experience, manufacturers, architects, and NHS estates and facilities and clinical personnel, had the opportunity to view the new facility and give some initial feedback. Kingsway Group, and all the other product manufacturers that have collaborated to get the CAMHS bedroom completed, have paid particular attention, in its design, to the views of users of such spaces, especially on features that tend to work well, and those that don't. For example, as I saw when Mark Childs showed me around — having first explained the background to, and aims of, the project — one of the first things one notices on entering the bedroom is a semi-circular 'refuge' alcove at the opposite side of the room to the bed. Here a service-user can retreat and feel 'invisible' from the door when they need space — a direct result of service-user feedback. A recurring theme throughout my visit was that the current bedroom is only a 'first iteration', and that all those involved want to see it further evolve and develop over time.

The CAMHS bedroom has been designed with the aim of improving such spaces across the mental healthcare sphere, and particularly to make them less institutional, more therapeutic, and as much of a 'home from home' as possible for the young users, while affording them a space where they will feel comfortable and safe, and have a sense of 'ownership'. All three of the project's instigators, Kingsway's Mark Childs, Andrew Arnold, the managing director of architects, Gilling Dod, and Kevin Gorman — founder, chairman, and owner of fenestration specialist, Britplas, have a personal passion for improving CAMHS provision. Mark Childs and his wife, for instance, have two adopted children, who have had their own mental health struggles, having had 'a very tough time' prior to their adoption.