3 June 2026 Seminars

Join Laura Baker, Interim National Deputy Director for Mental Health, in exploring the regulators' perspective on safe, compassionate and effective environments in mental health settings. In this session, Laura will look across the picture of quality in services that CQC hold, highlighting what’s working well in practice and showcasing some examples of good practice.

This presentation reports on a doctoral study presenting emerging findings on the role of sensory interventions in adult mental health. Sensory interventions draw on the understanding that sensory processing influences arousal, regulation, and participation, and are increasingly valued for supporting recovery, reducing distress, and promoting meaningful engagement. Yet, despite their growing use, there are significant gaps in evidence about what works, for whom, and how these approaches can be effectively implemented.

This qualitative study explores the perspectives of expert occupational therapists and sensory practitioners across diverse international contexts. The aims are to examine: (1) how sensory interventions are understood, adopted, and applied in practice; (2) the key factors that influence implementation; and (3) future recommendations for professional practice.

Following ethical approval in 2025, interviews commenced with participants representing 10 countries and a wide range of clinical, educational, and policy roles. This presentation will provide a synthesis of perspectives, highlighting convergences and divergences. Emerging themes include occupational therapy identity, theoretical uncertainty, environment as a key lever, practice challenges linked to evidence and resources, and outcomes related to participation and recovery. Participants also proposed future directions for training, policy, and service development.

This conference presentation will launch the latest publication from the Design with People in Mind series, Dignity by Design. The presentation will bring to life some of the key aspects of the new publication. We will explore the conceptual proposition that dignity is a mental health issue that is rarely considered in the design process which compromises attempts at social justice. Following this the paper will then move on to explore aspects of dignity through real life examples of spaces relevant to an individuals mental health, from clinical settings such as CAMHS services through to social infrastructure such as foodbanks. The paper will conclude with practical suggestions for how we can bring dignity and justice into the design process and will present a set of dignity by design principles.

Designed by Scott Tallon Walker Architects in association with Medical Architecture and opened in 2022, The National Forensic Mental Health Hospital in County Dublin, represented a once-in-a-generation step-change in the design of facilities for mental health services in Ireland.

Located on a 10-hectare woodland site, the 25,000m² campus replaced the existing Central Mental Hospital in Dundrum, and accommodates 170 high, medium, and low secure mental health beds. The accommodation is laid out as a series of single storey pavilion buildings around a pedestrianised ‘village green’ which contains peaceful gardens for patient amenity and therapeutic activities. Intuitive wayfinding is achieved through a site-wide narrative of colour, art, and landscaping.

The project brief and subsequent design were heavily focused around providing a safe, secure and healing environment that contributes to a patient’s recovery. This included:

• Strategic masterplanning and arrangement of accommodation to optimise the existing topology, mature woodland setting and long coastal views.
• Adopting a set of very clear planning principles to manage safety and security, while providing freedom of movement for patients
• Addressing the competing requirements of observation with the quality of space, daylight and views
• Creating high quality internal environments that will endure
• High quality landscaping and space for activity to create community, and a meaningful day for patients
• Accommodating differing services and future adaptability through standardisation of design.

In 2023, the building won International New Build Project of the Year and the Outside Space of the Year, at the DIMH Awards. The facility was hailed for setting a new standard in mental health facility design in Ireland. The presentation will look at evidence gathered during the building’s first three years of operation, and lessons that can be learnt to inform future developments of its kind.

This session will present the co-development journey of a ground-breaking non-visual patient safety aid designed specifically for use in psychiatric intensive care and other mental health settings and secure children care settings. Developed through close collaboration with NHS mental health trusts, clinical teams, service users, and industry partners, this solution addresses a critical unmet need: enhancing patient safety in low-stimulation environments where visual alerts may be unsuitable or inaccessible.
The project was guided from inception to implementation by the NHS Digital Health Technologies Assessment Criteria (DTAC), ensuring clinical efficacy, patient-centred design, interoperability, data protection, and rigorous evidence standards.
Attendees will gain insight into how these criteria were operationalised throughout the project—from early-stage needs assessment and stakeholder engagement through to prototyping, pilot deployment, and real-world evaluation.
The session will explore:
● The unique challenges of designing safety solutions in Secure Children’s Settings & mental health wards.

● How inclusive design and co-production methodologies led to a practical, human-centred innovation.

● Lessons learned from working across institutional boundaries to align safety, usability, and digital compliance.

● Early feedback and impact data from pilot sites.

This presentation will be valuable for clinical leaders, quality and safety specialists, digital health innovators, and policymakers interested in practical, scalable models of digital co-development in complex care settings.

Avon and Wiltshire Mental Health Partnership NHS Trust is developing The Kingfisher: a pioneering combined community and inpatient service tailored for people with learning disabilities and/or autism (LDA) who require acute inpatient treatment for mental health conditions.

This presentation will explore both the architectural design of the building and the development of the associated clinical model.

Providing effective support for people with LDA experiencing acute mental distress remains a significant challenge. Historically, general adult acute admission wards and psychiatric intensive care units have provided care despite not being designed to meet LDA-specific needs—often resulting in poor experiences and iatrogenic harm. While recent initiatives have aimed to offer community-based alternatives, many admissions are still prolonged and occur far from home.

The design of The Kingfisher has been led by a clinical reference group, including experts by lived experience, ensuring that the unit reflects the needs and values of those it serves.

Key Design Features Include:
• Energy Efficiency – BREEAM rated ‘Excellent’ and Carbon Net Zero
• Enhanced Bedrooms – Each with lounge, study, and dining space
• Private Gardens – Individual outdoor space for every bedroom
• Inclusive Facilities – Bariatric, accessible, and single-sex provision
• Activity Spaces – Dedicated areas for arts, crafts, domestic tasks, and exercise
• Biophilic Design – Natural artwork and living plants visible throughout
• Trauma-Informed Design
• Autism-Friendly Environments

The final building will feature art installations created by the charity Hospital Rooms, whose artists have collaborated with experts by lived experience to produce a unique and therapeutic visual environment.

The presentation will include:
• Architectural plans and visual materials
• Reference to relevant standards and evidence base
• First-hand accounts from project leaders and experts by experience

We will conclude with time for audience questions and discussion.

Central London Samaritans (CLS) is the founding branch of the charity, dedicated to providing 24/7 emotional support to anyone in distress or at risk of suicide. Murphy Philipps Architects were commissioned to design and remodel their new head office at 13 Salisbury Place, transforming a vacant office building into a warm, inclusive, and purpose-built environment that supports both volunteers and visitors.

Our presentation for Central London Samaritans will explore the transformative power of carefully considered environments in supporting the emotionally intense work carried out by staff and volunteers. As the lifeline for individuals in crisis, Samaritans’ teams engage daily in conversations that are often not only challenging but profoundly impactful, offering guidance and hope to those struggling to continue living and facing suicidal thoughts.

Drawing on our extensive experience designing specialised workspaces for call-takers at South Central Ambulance Service, we understand emotional toll such work can take and the necessity of spaces that allow staff and volunteers to decompress, reflect, and recharge after handling stressful, life-or-death calls.

In the evolving landscape of mental health care, lighting is emerging as a pivotal factor in both service user and staff physical and mental health, improving sleep, stabilising mood, reducing falls and the need for antipsychotic medication.

While new energy efficiency standards, such as Part L of the Building Regulations, could be seen as yet another expensive headache, this presentation will explore the 'silver lining' of increasingly stringent requirements for energy efficiency and control, offering insights from research and real-world examples along with practical strategies for retrofit and new build settings.

We will review the potential for smart lighting infrastructure to go beyond visual and circadian effects to provide a framework for more effective person-centred care, integrating sensors and environmental controls to monitor trends and trigger alerts, optimise comfort, energy consumption and facilities management without compromising privacy or dignity.

Attendees will come away with an understanding of current and new regulations coming down the track and invited to find the silver lining in a lighting upgrade to create a brighter, safer and more efficient future for all.

This presentation explores the impact of acoustic conditions on comfort in school dining halls, with a focus on inclusive design for children with sensory needs. While classroom acoustics is well-researched, dining halls are under researched, despite their importance as social and multi-use learning spaces and the importance of good acoustic design for inclusion, emotional regulation and psychological safety.

The study involved acoustic measurements and surveys across five schools, engaging over 300 students and over 9,500 teachers via an online survey. Students reported on perceived loudness, annoyance, conversational ease, and emotional responses. Results showed a strong correlation between shorter reverberation times and more positive experiences, including less annoyance due to noise, and increased ability to enjoy their lunch.

The research also explored the impact of acoustic capacity as well as controlling low frequency reverberation time. Based on student feedback, the study recommends revising BB93 standards to a lower reverberation time range of 0.5–0.8 seconds for dining halls (depending on room volume), to better support inclusive listening environments and improve outcomes for children with sensory needs. The criteria are achievable in practice with good acoustic design.

This research demonstrates the value of co-production in acoustic design and advocates for evidence-based standards that reflect the lived experience of students. It contributes to the growing conversation around designing educational spaces that promote wellbeing, inclusion, psychological safety and equitable access to communication.

Is the ‘tyranny of the pretty’ in danger of shifting our focus away from achieving value and measurable health outcomes in healthcare design?

‘Biophilic’ design is an architectural concept that aims to integrate natural elements and systems into the built environment to strengthen human connection with nature.

We believe that there is growing evidence that the notion of ‘Biophilic’ design, particularly as commonly applied to healthcare settings, is in danger of being oversimplistic. Healthcare environments are complex and highly dynamic. The pressures that are applied can rapidly change and this demands that the environment is highly adaptable and responsive to the needs of staff, patients and budgets!

Our focus should not be purely on the presence of ‘nature’ but on the truly functional. The aspiration should be to achieve measurable and sustainable healthcare outcomes.

This presentation will use the multiple award-winning ‘Meadow Green Outdoor Dementia Ward’ at the Princess of Wales Hospital in Bromsgrove as its basis. Building on this, we will offer insights into a developed approach that moves beyond the ‘Biophilic’.

This approach we have come to term ‘ALIVE’. ALIVE stands for Ambition, Lexicon, Individual, Value and Effectiveness, which we will explain. We’ll be supported by Mike Taylor, Capital Programme Manager for the Herefordshire and Worcestershire Health and Care NHS Trust.

We have worked with Mike and colleagues at the Trust for the last twenty years. The presentation will illustrate and evidence some of the findings from this relationship and will point to improvements in the philosophy of design of the external environment in healthcare settings.

The SouthWest London and St George’s Mental Health NHS Trust commissioned new hospital buildings, Trinity and Shaftesbury, which opened in December 2022 and September 2023 respectively. Since opening, the new hospital buildings have been singled-out for national and international acclaim & awards. They are the centrepiece of an Estates Modernisation Programme focused on the de-stigmatization and integration of mental healthcare facilities within a large-scale development that now includes 1,200 new homes, a new 32-acre public park, retail shops and community spaces created on surplus NHS land.
Co-designed with staff, patients, carers and service users, the aim was to create therapeutic and dignified surroundings for staff and service-users using open courtyards, planted gardens, ample daylight, fresh air, safe layouts, artworks and careful attention to acoustics. The hospital’s purpose was to replace Victorian facilities with high quality inpatient and outpatient services, giving patients a chance to recover in an environment that supports the care they deserve.
The initial post-occupancy data shows serious incidents have been reduced by over 36% - an exceptional and noteworthy benefit. Energy use in the new facility is 17% below projected values.

But has the facility made working or staying in a mental health facility better? And, if so, how?

The presentation will look at how hospital spaces have been adapted after hand-over to address practical concerns about maintenance, control and security. It will look at specific features of the new hospital that are valued (or not) by service-users, clinical staff and management. Lastly the talk will examine how can designers, product manufacturers and stakeholders can uphold and deliver the vision of better, safer and therapeutic mental healthcare facilities.

We’ll discuss the process of co-design with a Young Adult Council (YAC) who shared their lived experience to inform every aspect of the project from the programming through to the delivery of a completely reimagined historic warehouse space in the Queen West neighbourhood. Stella’s provides peer support for ages 16 to 29; a cohort that is often faced with challenges accessing mental health services for their unique needs, particularly as they transition from child/youth services to adult care under an entirely different provincial ministry. Stella’s was inspired through the experiences of one family as they sought ongoing support for a young adult post inpatient care. Realizing that many young adults were facing the same gap and often abandoning therapy, they sought to create effective programming with the YAC, researchers and clinical advisors that allows participants to seek out their peers in a setting that is the very opposite of ‘clinical,’ close to where they live, work and attend school all without any cost.

Over a 10-month planning, design and fast track construction process, we had dozens of workshop and meeting with front line peer support staff for a facility of 150 full time employees at Dauphin Crisis Center. The youth and adult observation units, staffed with both young people with lived experience as well as adults, were essential to crafting the experience of the space. From the welcoming but separate youth and adult behavioral health urgent care entrances to the observation lounge design, peer support drove design.

At the Aqqusariaq Nunavut Recovery Centre, Inuit in Nunavut seeking to address generational trauma and care in their community have developed a one-of-a-kind model of family inpatient care lead by a Cultural and Lived Experience Advisory Council (CLEAC). The programming and design was shaped with the purpose of reconnecting a community through culturally-contextual healing in a “Made in Nunavut” model of care.

The presentation will focus on how we have started a complex journey in realising a shared vision and ambitious plans driven by a unique collaboration between an NHS Foundation Trust, the oldest university in the English-speaking work, and a philanthropist.
This presentation will follow on from “Engaging the Vision for the New Warneford Park”, the presentation we gave in 2024 - Outlining the vision to create an outstanding environment for healthcare, research, innovation, and education, achieved with true co production.
This year we will update our journey and describe how we hope to create a new sustainably designed mental health hospital, offering the best therapies, care, and a therapeutic environment that provides the best opportunity for recovery, co-located with global brain health research facilities and reuse the existing Late Georgian, Warneford Hospital building to provide a new post-graduate college that educates future generations of clinicians and researchers.
In 2026 we will celebrate 200 years of continual clinical use of the existing Warneford Hospital, we reflect on the lessons of the past that are helping us ensure that the New Warneford Park can continue to adapt and support care into the next 200 years.
From legacy to innovation the importance of nature enhancing design and the importance of meaningful co production throughout our design process.

The project included several workshops, design consultations and production meetings involving service-users, experts-by-experience, students, academics, clinical leads and occupational therapists. Tracy Colpitts, Clinical Project Manager (EoD project team, LPFT) commented that 'Since the opening of our new wards in June 2023, we have reported an increase of patient use within the courtyards and seating is placed appropriately near the art display to encourage patients to view the intricacies of detail within the design. Staff have positively reported that patients gravitate to this area and often spend suitable amounts of time focussing on the images, away from the main ward areas which can often be busy and over stimulating. Staff also use the artwork to initiate conversation and discussions with patients and aide de-escalation and grounding techniques. The collaboration with our university colleagues has opened doors for discussions around mental health, particularly the connection with poor mental health that resonates within the university and associated pressures students face within their academic life. By holding engagement workshops and enabling the UoL students to meet with our inpatients, it has proven to be such a positive and wholesome experience to support the reduction of stigma associated with mental health and to raise the awareness of the vulnerabilities that all individuals can, and often do face, regarding mental health distress within all walks and ages of life. Therefore, the workshops supporting our scheme have proven to be so much more than the artwork itself. A truly inspiring example of collaboration between healthcare settings and our wider community educational services, empowering individuals to be creative, share goals and achievements and work together to create artistic masterpieces for all to enjoy'.