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Client: Liverpool and Sefton Healthcare Partnership, Mersey Care NHS Trust
Location: Walton, Liverpool
Cost: £25M/£1.5M Landscape Furnishes
Area: 2 hectares
Project Type: Therapeutic & Learning
The Merseycare TIME project (To Improve Mental health Environments) heralds a fundamental step change in the approach to mental health care provision in the Mersey area and is testiment to the increasing significance that policy makers are placing on high quality external environments as a mechanism for improving clinical outcomes. The practice was pulled into the design team in June 2010 to assist with demonstrating the power of landscape (working hand in hand with the architecture) to provide therapeutic, non-institutional environments which reflect the diverse needs of patients, staff and visitors. Working with clinical and design professionals, as well as end service users, the proposed scheme encapsulates up to the minute thinking with regards to older persons and adult mental health care (including the learning disability pathway,) and has been strongly shaped by the strategic vision of the health care trust. Publicly accessible areas are subtly separated by innovative security solutions and twelve bespoke service user gardens were designed to support service user rehabilitation. This included young adult and learning disability groups as well as adult and older person mental health pathways.
The historic parkland context of the Walton scheme, Rice Lane, and its proximity to the historic Bootle Docks, provided ample inspiration and reference for a strong vision on the site which tunes in to the unique characteristics of the locality in the interest of enriching and connecting with service users.
Publicly accessible areas are subtly separated by innovative security solutions and 12 bespoke service user gardens were designed to support service user rehabilitation. This included young adult and learning disability groups as well as adult and older person mental health pathways.