User centred design at the heart of Warneford Park plans

The vision

We have ambitious plans, working in partnership with the University of Oxford and a partner, to replace it with:

• a new mental health hospital, offering the best treatment, care, and therapeutic environment.
• co-located with a major brain health research and innovation campus housing/creating a modern scientific environment for the world-leading brain research taking place at the University of Oxford, with additional space for biotech, pharmaceutical and start-up companies.
• a new post-graduate college for the University of Oxford focused on medical sciences, bio-engineering and related disciplines.

At the heart of everything

At the heart of the plans being developed is user centred design and co-production. Co-production is about the inclusion of people with lived experience of mental illness, as well as their partners, family and friends (who are all “Experts by Experience”) in the design, planning and delivery of services as equal partners with service providers and professionals.

Co-production acknowledges that people with ‘lived experience’ of mental illness are often best placed to advise on what support and services will make a positive difference to their lives. Done well, co-production helps to ground discussions, and to maintain a person-centred perspective.

Through engagement with clinicians, staff and EBEs, we want to gain the maximum therapeutic benefits for the design and build process.  We need to improve our services and delivery environments and we want to reduce stigma and promote recovery in a way that properly recognises the need to value mental health equally to physical health.

Co-production makes sense

In this project we have captured some of the lessons from the past such as how important the landscape and therapeutic spaces are for patient recovery.  At the same time, we have looked at other mental health units and services, to see how they do things and what lessons we can apply to our project.

The principles guiding co-production in the Warneford Park project

• To start from what matters most to people who will use and work in the hospital services.
• To work with people who have relevant lived experience (patients, service users, unpaid carers and people in paid lived experience roles) and with staff, in everything we do to directly connect with multiple and diverse voices.
• To build equal and reciprocal partnerships with people who have relevant lived experience and staff, including with those from disadvantaged and minority communities, from the very start of, and throughout, all our design and build work on this very exciting project.
• To create a hospital space that understands and supports the needs of those who will be cared for and those who will deliver care within the hospital environment.

Aideen our EBE facilitator is an employed member of the project team. She works alongside Robert Dawson, Architect, Eric Parry Architects and Samantha Robinson, Clinical Nurse Lead, OHFT and others in the project team presented the vision for how this will happen at the Design in Mental Health conference in June.

Sam talked about the importance of giving equal weight to the voices of those with lived experience. She said:

“We believe it is an essential part of the project evolution rather than “nice to have” or just a tick box exercise.

Active discussion, involvement, and feedback to support the design process is essential and the basis of our ability to take confident discussions to our partners, stakeholders and into wider public engagement.”

Sam added:

“To achieve true co-production, we began a series of workshops in July 2022 with EBEs, staff and clinicians from each clinical area/field of care.  The shared learning has been hugely beneficial in agreeing core requirements and understanding the diverse needs of the same space for different people.

We also held a `Perfect Day’ workshop (as good as we can make it) which provided specific feedback on what could be improved within the environment and how technology could increase the time available to care.  There was a huge optimism for the benefits of closer collaboration and cohesion especially for our service users.”

User centred design

Robert Dawson from Eric Parry Architects described how the outputs from the workshops have been incorporated into the design evolution and landscape and connection are the key points from every workshop and feedback we’ve had.

Robert added:

“We believe that it is possible, with good design, to create safe outdoor spaces without the stigma of high fences, preferring to use the security of the building itself. The importance of natural light and a view was another key theme along with protecting privacy and dignity.  Central to our design is to maintain a view and connection to the Warneford meadow (the 21-acre protected and undeveloped site).”

Find out more about the project and share your thoughts and views with us at jointheconversation.scwcsu.nhs.uk/warneford-park-consultation