Lady Cilento Children’s Hospital

Destravis was engaged by Children’s Health Queensland to provide specialist health design services in support of a functional re-design for the Mental Health Unit at Lady Cilento Children’s Hospital.

The unit comprises of an acute child inpatient unit (9-beds), an acute adolescent inpatient unit (11-beds) and a sub-acute day program. These provide acute multi-specialist, multi-disciplinary assessment, treatment and diagnostic clarification for young people.

Since commissioning of the acute mental health unit, a number of functional limitations were identified which needed urgent addressing such as staff safety, patient flow, sight lines, limited usability of external spaces and limited spaces for patient activity and therapy.

Destravis conducted a full review of the unit with a view to providing low, medium and full budget options for re-design the unit to address the issues in order of priority. A major constraint to the design solution was that the unit operates at full capacity and needs to remain functional and operational during any construction period.

Investigations included observations, stakeholder consultation and design review workshops. The review was informed by both national and international contemporaneous acute child and adolescent unit designs.

A functional brief, test-fit, schedule of accommodation and feasibility study was developed for each of the three (low, medium and full) options.

Destravis now has approval to proceed to concept design on a preferred option for re-design of the unit including internal, staged refurbishment and external sun-shading to provide safe, functional indoor and outdoor therapy and recreation spaces.