Mental health centre showcases facilities (From Watford Observer)
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Mental health centre showcases facilities
4:31pm Monday 29th October 2012 in News
A Radlett mental health centre has hosted a visit by a group of South African hospital architects, project managers and healthcare specialists in a bid to showcase UK healthcare facilities.
The group is about to embark on stage three of a renovation project for the government-funded, tertiary psychiatric hospital Valkenberg in Cape Town.
The visitors were given a comprehensive tour of the Oak and Beech Unit, a major recent £12m investment by the Hertfordshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust (HPFT) - the county’s specialist provider of mental health and learning disability services.
They wanted to see firsthand recent trends in the design of healthcare facilities in the UK and were also keen to talk to staff to get their views on the new unit.
In 2009, the trust won a prestigious national Building Better Healthcare (BBH) award for the design of Oak and Beech, its psychiatric intensive care unit and rehabilitation unit housed on the Kingsley Green site in Radlett.
The BBH judges particularly commended the way service user input had influenced the design of the building and its facilities.
Paul Tanner, the project architect for Oak and Beech from architects Dransfield Owens Design joined the visitors to answer design questions.
