Co-Designing Mental Health Services.
Co-Design | Design Research | Culture Change | Participatory Design | Strategy | Visual Communication | Built Environment | Teaching | Evaluation
Deep Partnership.
Over four years, I worked with Nepean Blue Mountains Mental Health Centre to help improve their service provision through design.
Together we co-developed new philosophies of care, designed more therapeutic interior and exterior environments, embedded a culture of co-design and engagement, envisioned new family therapy services. and explored how to design and deliver better virtual care for their Local Health District.
New Approaches to Care.
We worked with all stakeholders across the Nepean Mental Health ecosystem to understand what person-centric care looks like to them. The ‘Landscape of Care’ provides the basis for a more individualised, non-linear approach to the delivery of the service, for consumers, carers and staff alike.
Core Design Team
Designing with diverse stakeholders
Bringing people into the process from all over the Centre and broader community helped made them feel heard and included in decision making. It helped build confidence and creativity in their experiences and ideas, with a lasting impact on the way the Centre engages with its staff and community.
Co-Design of Built Environments.
Rethinking Centre Spaces.
The cold and clinical interior and exterior spaces within the Centre made it difficult for consumers to undertake meaningful recovery journeys, and for staff to engage with them in this.
Co-Design Workshops.
We held workshops with a range of Nepean stakeholders to get their perspectives on how to reduce the need for seclusion through space and environment redesign. This included new courtyards and therapeutic rooms.
Concepts.
Consumers, carers and staff worked with architects to translate their ideas into conceptual drawings. This was a first for both Nepean stakeholders and the architects themselves.
Commissioning.
Consumers and staff have already found the courtyards more useful and relaxing, with gym equipment, places for reflection, natural foliage and shade. Being included in the process made people at the Centre much more at ease with the construction process.
Concepts for Change.
Working with the diverse Core Design Team helped to identify areas for improvement within the Centre, which were further developed and implemented over time.
Evaluating Together.
We worked with the Nepean Blue Mountains community to understand what changes they were seeing as a result of working together. We used ‘Most Significant Change’ as an evaluation method to collect their stories in their words, and to uncover unexpected insights. Since then, we have seen and heard more and more longer-term impacts to culture and environment within the service.
“The way our ‘system’ is designed and funded means that help is often not available until a person has deteriorated to crisis point…we need to think about the whole-of-life of people, rather than just waiting until things go wrong”
— The Hon. Julia Gillard AC, chairman for beyondblue
Illustrations by Lucy Klippan.