Riverside Adolescent Mental Health Unit

The Riverside Unit is an Adolescent Mental Health Unit for young people aged 13 – 18 and serves the Bristol, South Gloucestershire and North Somerset regions, providing in-patient care for 10 residents, alongside a day programme.

Our specialist healthcare architects were challenged to improve patient privacy and dignity by incorporating en-suites into all bedrooms and provide a bold new extension to accommodate auxiliary offices, teaching spaces and therapy suites.

Working closely with the entire team, we designed a scheme set over two floors with treatment areas, secure rooms and back of house training facilities, all squeezed into a single building. This required careful and thoroughly well thought out reconfiguration of the existing building, with clear security strategy planning, anti-ligature design principles and detailed fire strategies to allow for safe passage in a fire, whilst maintaining secure living for the patients during their treatment period.

We also addressed other key issues that emerged through stakeholder engagement sessions with staff and residents. Creating a warmer, homely feel through interior design, flooding spaces with natural daylight, resulting in a successful scheme well-liked by patients and staff.

Riverside CAMHS in Bristol, part of Avon & Wiltshire Mental Health NHS Trust is an ever evolving mental health project. Quattro’s Healthcare Architects and Design Team has been providing an ongoing watching brief of continual phased development to front line in-patient mental health services for the trust.