Ruby: Our Women’s Psychiatric Intensive Care Service

A provision for women in a safe, secure and therapeutic environmentFor all enquiries about this service, please contact: 020 7561 4182

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Ruby - our new Women’s Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit (WPICU) - provides care for women who require a secure environment to treat problems they are presenting with.

Aims and principles:

Provide high-quality, gender-sensitive and evidence-based therapy to support women in acute mental health crises in an environment that uses a trauma informed approach.

This will help us to ensure that even when women are cared for in the most restrictive setting:

• Their physical and psychological safety is most important

• They have a positive, user-focused experience, where they feel understood, supported and have benefitted from their stay

• That there is always access to female members of staff on every shift and all women have a female primary nurse

• They will be involved in the ongoing development of the service and review policies and participate in the Women’s Forum

• That their care, support and treatment provided recognises and addresses the impact of their social and economic status

Location:

Ruby is located on the ground floor of the Huntley Centre, at St Pancras Hospital in Camden.

Appropriate lighting, heating and soft furnishing have all been put in place to provide a calming environment for women, which is in line with the National Association of Psychiatric Intensive Care and Low Secure Units (NAPICU) guidance.

This page summarises some of Ruby’s aims and principles.

About Ruby Ruby’s facilities include:11 bedrooms with ensuite showers and toilets

Referrals• Aged 18+• Suffering from an acute mental health crisis or an exacerbation of a

chronic mental health issue• Displaying challenging behaviours as a result of mental health• Significant risk, including aggression to self and others, absconding

and/or vulnerability• Requiring relatively short-term intensive care in a safe environment• Detained under the Mental Health Act• Residents in Camden, Islington, Barnet, Enfield and Haringey• Where beds are available, we will take spot purchase admissions from

any mental health trust

We accept referrals for adult women in need of intensive psychiatric care:

AdmissionWomen will have a full mental health assessment and be offered a range of appropriate therapeutic and recreational activities.

They will be encouraged to play an active part in care planning.

Once risk is reduced and the patient’s mental state and behaviour has been stabilised, transfer to an appropriate facility will be arranged.

We focus on moving individuals to less secure or community settings as soon as possible.

This page outlines some of the referral and processes. Please refer to the Operational Policy for full details.

Profile

Discharge

To ensure we’re working effectively and that service users receive the best treatment possible, we engage with services across our local boroughs throughout the above stages.

a large communal area for meals

an activities and socialising room

a computer room with internet access

an extra care room

rooms for one-to-one and clinical meetings

an open courtyard and conservatory for therapeutic activities

a quiet area

a kitchen and snacks and drinks station

a standalone bathroom

a bedroom to meet the needs of women with physical disabilities

a sensory room

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Service users on Ruby are supported by a team of experienced medical and nursing staff, psychologists, social workers, occupational therapists, assistant practitioners and support workers - some of who are pictured below.

They offer a range of group and individual therapeutic interventions to meet the women’s needs at different stages of their recovery.

The service is predominantly staffed by women, who have had specialist training in gender-informed practice, providing a trauma informed environment and specialist medicines management.

The team provides a contained and consistent structured approach, with a full daily treatment programme. This enables the environment to be therapeutic, despite the restrictive setting.

A more detailed description of the multidisciplinary team can be found in our Operational Policy.

Therapeutic interventions and who provides them

Early and effective intervention

Helping people to live well

Research and innovation

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At Camden and Islington NHS Foundation Trust (C&I), we provide high-quality, safe and innovative care to our service users in the community, in their homes or in hospital.

We deliver effective care for adults of working age, adults with learning difficulties and older people.

The majority of our care is delivered to residents in the London Boroughs of Camden and Islington but we also offer care for women outside of our local area.

C&I is committed to providing high quality women-only services and aims to embed a trauma informed approach to all our services.

Why choose C&I?

Our clinical strategy (2016-21) states that:

“C&I adopts a holistic approach to supporting women’s needs. Our Women’s Lead provides a resource for staff to consult on specific matters to better support women who access our services.

“We provide training on women’s mental health, domestic and sexual abuse, working with self-injury, responding to disclosures of childhood abuse. This is provided within a trauma informed model of care, which recognises the distressing events that have occurred in the lives of many people who use mental health services.

“The model aims to provide environments where people can disclose what has happened to them, where they can expect staff to listen with compassion and respect, and where staff have the skills to validate and ‘bear witness’ to these events.

“Trauma informed teams behave in ways that do not re-traumatise survivors of abuse, for example, knocking on a bedroom door and giving the person time to answer, and automatically offering service users the choice of the gender of their worker.”

Ruby is an addition to the Trust’s existing Acute women’s services, that include our

Our three priorities:

We have identified four cultural pillars to help us achieve these. They are:

1 We value each otherthis involves supporting each other’s wellbeing and development

2 We are empoweredthis means taking action and responsibility to do what is best for your services and team

3 We keep things simplethis means cutting out bureaucracy when it adds nothing

4 We are connectedthis means working collaboratively across services and organisations, rather than in silos

Women’s services at C&I

Women’s Treatment Ward, Rosewood; our Women’s Crisis House at Drayton Park and our expanding peri-natal mental health services. This is to ensure that local women, who need this intense level of care, are able to access it closer to their homes and support systems.

We will ensure that all residents - regardless of race, age, gender, disability, religion and belief, sexual orientation, gender reassignment, pregnancy and maternity, marriage and civil partnerships - can access our services fairly and consistently.

We design all our women services in collaboration with local women who have lived experience of mental health issues. This is to ensure we fully understand our service users’ cultural needs and backgrounds, and can embed any learning into developing accessible services.

Adele McKay Acute Services: Divisional Director

Adebisi AjadiTrust service user

Ruby WardHuntley Centre

St Pancras Hospital4 St Pancras Way

London NW1 0PE

Enquiries about referrals are coordinated through our Bed Management Team.

Please call: 020 7561 4182

Ruby.Ward@Candi.nhs.uk

www.candi.nhs.uk

Ruby is within walking distance from King’s Cross, St Pancras International

and Mornington Crescent stations

The 214 and 46 buses also run from these stations to the main entrance of the

site

Getting in touch

This brochure summarises the Women’s PICU Operational Policy

All details were correct at time of publishing: June 2018

Bed Management enquiries:

Team Manager John Ryan

John.Ryan@Candi.nhs.uk

Clinical enquiries:

Matron Kerry O’Brien

Kerry.O’Brien@Candi.nhs.uk

Lead ConsultantDr Neil Sarkar

Neil.Sarkar@Candi.nhs.uk

Ward ManagerRick Bolton

Rick.Bolton@Candi.nhs.uk