Hopewood Campus

The campus-style design incorporates an attractive and calming environment, including parklands, horticulture, and woodland trails, with the buildings carefully set into natural, calming areas within the site. The new buildings are light and bright, with lots of large windows giving users views out into the campus and the surrounding green space and landscape. Much care and attention was given to the landscaping of the outside areas, acknowledging the important role that environment plays in influencing positive wellbeing and recovery outcomes. Gilling Dod’s architectural design also aimed to maximise efficiencies in the care that is delivered, whilst promoting recovery in a positive, uplifting setting without the traditional feel and atmosphere of a hospital environment.

Prior to the Hopewood Campus, around 25 patients from Nottinghamshire needed to be sent out of area for treatment. The new state-of-the-art Hopewood Campus has provided required additional capacity. With twice as many beds now available, more young people and women can be treated locally, staying close to their homes, families and communities in the best facilities to meet their clinical needs.

The Lookout Adolescent Unit is the first NHS unit in the region to offer a dedicated specialist eating disorders inpatient service and PICU for young people. The Adolescent Unit was designed and built with patient safety and protection at the fore. WSP ensured that the structure was built into internal wall lines to provide maximum robustness, preventing the possibility of patients breaking through walls and limiting the potential for rough construction edges. WSP worked closely with Gilling Dod in positioning the structure to ensure all sight lines from the nurse’s offices were unobstructed down corridors and into courtyards. This ensured patient safety through good staff visibility. New clinic and consultation rooms provide spaces for a variety of therapies to be offered, such as group therapy and one-to-one care.

Green Havan Perinatal Unit includes additional bed capacity than previously available and is one of only 19 specialist mother and baby units in the country. Additionally, it is accredited by the Royal College of Psychiatrists’ Centre of Quality Improvement. It is delivering the Trust’s aim to provide rapid and effective care for the mother’s mental illness whilst promoting the mother and baby relationship, facilitating mothers providing independent care for their baby.

Healing and recovery is supported with more children able to access services in a compassionate environment closer to their homes and families.

The therapeutic nature of the scheme was designed-in from the outset. The architect undertook creative workshops with staff and some of the young people to develop building names, colour schemes and narrative, giving them a sense of ownership and involvement. The selected ‘Hopewood’ concept unifies ideas and thoughts from these discussions, presenting a focus on natural landscapes and creating feelings of hope.

The interior provides a comforting palette of cool and calming tones, which offers an uplifting, therapeutic feel to a safe and accessible space. A coherent and co-ordinated approach with signage, artwork, and furniture colours ensured a holistic and considered finish.

WSP designed and included large column free areas, which ensured plenty of open space was provided to provide a relaxation zone for the children and young people.

Patient engagement highlighted the importance of ensuring the facility didn’t feel too clinical and institutionalised. Healing and recovery was embedded into the building fabric, with young people being encouraged to incorporate positive messages on the building materials.
Inpatient wards have single en-suite bedrooms, offering calm, personal space, privacy and dignity, with access to communal areas, day spaces, private gardens and additional green space within the campus.

The new facilities are set in their own landscaped gardens, which greatly enhances the clinical space and reinforces the connection to the local community. Recognising the role of outside space in promoting wellbeing, each ward has a private garden, with additional green space available for use on Hopewood Campus’ grounds, where appropriate.

Social and environmental factors were integral to the Green Havan Perinatal Unit, where the facilities for mothers and their families centre around a large, welcoming and homely communal open plan lounge and dining area. This reinforces the importance of social support and engagement.