'Peace pod' to help child mental health patients
North Staffordshire Combined Healthcare NHS TrustA "peace pod" designed to reduce the number of hospital stays for children and young people with complex mental health issues has opened in Staffordshire.
The suite, at North Staffordshire Combined Healthcare NHS Trust's Darwin Centre, in Stoke-on-Trent, offers therapeutic support and interventions, staff said.
It is designed to provide an alternative to a ward for patients with eating disorders, acute emotional dysregulation or learning disabilities.
Believed to be the first of its kind in the country, it is hoped the new space will avoid patients requiring admission to the trust's psychiatric intensive care unit and specialist eating disorder unit.
The development of the pod and training for staff was funded by Toucan, a West Midlands Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services provider.
Liz Mellor, chief strategy officer at Combined Healthcare, said it would enable the trust to deliver "the best quality care for young people when they need it the most".
Service manager Glynis Harford, explained the young patients at the Darwin Centre, who are aged between 12 and 18, sometimes needed "high-intensity, short-term" care or support to move through "distressing emotions".
"The suite will form a core part of the ward, acting as a flexible space that we can quickly and easily reconfigure as a safe space to deliver more intensive support where required," she said.
Other improvements recently made at the Darwin Centre included the addition of a dietician, an art therapist and upgraded sensory equipment, the trust added.