The Design in Mental Health Network (DIMHN), which is holding a special Workshop event on 9 October at this month’s Healthcare Estates event, will launch a ‘concept adult mental health bedroom’, ‘The Better Bedroom’, on its stand (D11) at the show.
Developed in partnership with the Building Research Establishment (BRE), the concept bedroom will ‘bring together the latest best practice to ensure adult mental health service users benefit from a modern, homely bedroom that offers a therapeutic and safe environment’. The first of two sample bedrooms will be unveiled at Britplas’s Warrington factory on October 8, with a second planned at the BRE Innovation Park in Watford. It is hoped the bedroom will stimulate debate among commissioners, clinicians, designers, manufacturers, and service users. Jenny Gill, leading the Better Bedroom initiative on DIMHN’s behalf, said: “We hope people will come along to see the bedroom and say ‘I’ve got a better solution for that’. We certainly do not see it as a finished product; our aim is to stimulate innovation. It incorporates products which may be considered to be some of the best presently available.” DIMHN says The Better Bedroom ‘looks at ways of balancing the demands of creating an anti-ligature environment with user-friendliness, risk management, and efficiency’. To register for the DIMHN workshop, visit www.healthcare-estates.com and to express interest in a future Better Bedroom visit, see: www.dimhn.org/design
