Published on: 13th December 2022
Following a 2.5 year programme, all 18 of our acute mental health wards now offer single gender accommodation. This means providing same gender sleeping areas, bathrooms, toilets, and communal areas. The aim is to improve care and safety and provide our patients with the highest levels of privacy and dignity.
And all wards now provide care for a single type of mental health condition – functional (e.g. depression, anxiety or personality disorders) or organic (e.g. dementia or other neurological conditions). This will allow staff to provide more specialist care that better meets patients’ needs.
As part of the improvements, £1.5m was invested in replacing our two remaining shared dormitory wards with single ensuite bedrooms.
Our Moorside ward, based at Rochdale’s Birch Hill Hospital, now has 18 bedrooms for women aged 18 to 65 years, with functional conditions. Other improvements include a gym, therapy kitchen and lounge.
Ramsbottom ward, based at Bury’s Fairfield Hospital, has 10 bedrooms for women aged over 65 years, with organic conditions. Patients are also benefitting from a sensory room, with colour changing lights and hand painted fireplace, nature themed relaxation areas, an assisted bathroom and new outdoor area.
Both projects also included a range of improvements to support the wellbeing of our colleagues, including a staff room and changing facilities.
Laura Challis, Ramsbottom ward manager said: “We’re all delighted with the improvements.
“We can now carefully tailor our care and therapy for women with dementia and we’ve really seen a difference.
“The single bedrooms have helped with privacy, dignity, and safety. And we have much more space on the ward, which assists in the delivery of therapeutic activities.
“Now we’re able to focus on single gender and condition, we’re working towards becoming dementia care specialists. This involves undertaking lots of training to build our expertise, so our patients can benefit from the gold standard care they deserve.”
View our single gender accomodation infographic for a summary of all the work we've competed on this.
This work is part of our ambitious transformation programme.
Pictured above is the refurbished Ramsbottom ward.