Trauma-informed approach to design

A child-friendly environment for the recovery of women and babies in a home-like and trauma-informed setting.

NBRS was been engaged to design the Westmead Mother Baby Unit at Redbank House, Westmead. The unit has been designed to allow mothers suffering from acute mental health issues to be admitted to a safe and comfortable inpatient unit along with their newborns. This model prioritises the mother's needs, enabling access to support and care while also providing the opportunity for bonds between mother and infant to form while treatment occurs.

Recently completed, the unit took a trauma-informed approach to design, recognising that significant barriers to recovery can be overcome by designing spaces that are unintimidating, of a human scale, warm and comfortable. Feelings of entrapment are to be reduced by providing transparency to the building and connecting with the landscape. Mothers and infants will enjoy warm, playful, home-like spaces where wellness is integrated with daily life.

Although it is a secure unit, the design provides mothers with autonomy and freedom of movement within the secure perimeter. Key to this approach was providing a variety of spaces from social to secluded, indoor to outdoor, mostly light-filled but with blackout curtains available. Consumer representatives were actively involved in user groups under the SWMHIP Co-design approach, and their feedback provided valuable direction to the design. Patients will be able to choose between a variety of restorative settings, with the architecture of the building playing a key role in empowering consumers to influence their own path to recovery.