Re-writing the book on mental health services can lead to new, exciting, and transformational ideas. However, as architect, Andrew Street, studio associate at IBI Group, explains, given the opportunity to reinvent one’s mental health strategy and develop a brand new home for one’s services, while faced with the geographical and demographical challenges of being based on a small island – in this case Guernsey – the rewards can be even greater.
The Health and Social Services Department (HSSD) in Guernsey embarked on this journey in 2002, when it concluded that its mental health provision was not providing 21st century care to the island’s population. One outcome was the beautifully designed £24 million Oberlands Centre completed in January 2016. A key member of the project team was Colin Vines, mental health service manager at States of Guernsey, HSSD, who moved to Guernsey in 2011 to head mental health and manage the redesign of services and the development of the new mental health unit. He explained: “Our service was out-of-date and being delivered from disparate locations throughout the island. We recognised that our service-users were experiencing a care path that wasn’t supportive of their needs, and something radical needed to happen to ensure that we provided a first-class service.”
The HSSD team spent a year reviewing its service carefully, and made a step-change towards transforming its ‘model of care’ to one that focused on collaboration, therapy, wellbeing, and recovery. Ultimately, for the strategy to be successful, the Department needed to house all of its services in one fit-forpurpose building. In 2003, healthcare architects, IBI Group, were employed by the HSSD to undertake an extensive stakeholder consultation exercise to enable the team to appraise a number of potential sites around Guernsey. “The co-location of our services has been the cornerstone of this process,” explained Colin Vines. “We were able to work closely with IBI Group to translate our vision into a concept that would see our service-users and staff sharing and enjoying a high quality environment – a far cry from our past, where individuals were tolerating old facilities that actually deterred people from using our service.”
It was important as architects that we were able to future-proof mental health services in Guernsey. It was essential that the HSSD could address an ever-changing range of mental health needs locally, rather than reverting to costly off-island provision; therefore the new facility needed to flex. This had a great bearing on the choice of site.
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