'Design', in the subtitle of Robin Johnson's 'Psychologically Informed Environments from the ground up' (HERE) is about designing both buildings AND services. They go hand in hand.

Here are the practice examples he gives of 'design':

• The Access Hub - Simon community, Glasgow : HERE
• No Magnolia anywhere - the Wallich’s staff briefing, Cardiff : HERE
• Elastic tolerance and the impact of low-cost changes: Highwater House : HERE
• The Big Issue (on working with limited strengths and short time spans), London : HERE
• Short time spans and person-centred incentives - Potter St, Mansfield : HERE
• Tackling the leaving care crisis; Haringey SSD : HERE
• A trauma informed design check: HERE list, DRH, Florida : HERE
• Forgivable loans for housing development: 1011 Lansdowne, Toronto :  HERE
• System change and system brokers; Newcastle & Gateshead : HERE

If relationships are central to developing PIEs (HERE), there are many ways of promoting engagement and a sense of belonging.

Here are just a few examples:

• 'The biscuits are important' - Focus Ireland, Cork : HERE
• The democracy of pidgin - Aux Captifs la Liberation, Paris: HERE
• The engagement window and the safe couch - Right There, West Kirkbride: HERE
• Community work on the streets - REACH, West Massachusetts: COMING SOON HERE
• Group support, clinical support and community with tenancy, Seattle: HERE
• Working together - ADAPT, West Sussex: HERE
• Images of home -  OT research project, University of Plymouth: HERE
• Walking together: JustLife, Brighton: COMING SOON!

Developing a culture of learning and enquiry (HERE) involves many ways 'thinking differently' (HERE) about the challenges of meeting complex needs.

• The meaning of reception: Pole Rosa Luxembourg, Paris: HERE
• Rethinking the staff role: University of Hertfordshire: HERE
• Noticing small things: an outreach worker’s blog, Stoke on Trent : HERE
• Appreciative Inquiry at King George’s Hostel, London: HERE
• Exclusion Informed research: conference presentation, London: HERE
• Power imbalance and empowerment techniques: Participatory Appraisal, Tower Hamlets: HERE
• Introducing reflective practice on psychiatric wards: NHS, Bristol: HERE
• ‘TCs’ and the emergence of a new social psychiatry: HERE
• Commissioning for complexity: new thinking on funding frameworks: HERE

 

But this is still a fairly small selection - and on each PIElink page there is usually no more than half a dozen or so examples in each case - and we can easily miss much very valuable material to learn from.

It would surely be helpful to have a more comprehensive listing. But complex needs are complex, and services to meet these complex needs will also be complex and multi-faceted. Cataloguing them in any fashion is always going to be at best problematic, at worst, unsatisfactory and frustrating.

We are nevertheless beginning a process of attempting to group some of these case studies by some more generalised themes (HERE). But do bear with us:  this will take time.

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Searching by keywords or whole phrases

The Library is the location for all these examples, and searching through it using keywords can be productive in showing a long string of subjects, authors etc.

But searching through any on-line library simply by using keywords is an unreliable method - it relies on good initial coding, whereas issues and terminologies interweave, and change, so this method can at times be quite frustrating.

The search function -which you will find in the footer of every page -  is generally more reliable. It will find whatever it may find, and it will search both library items and pages. But it will find a more random sample; they will not be a 'curated' sample, as those above are.

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Some attempted clusters

For now, in the side column here (or below, or a mobile) you find links to the case studies used in the first two UK government guidance documents. They are ten years old now; but the ideas are still relevant, even if the services have moved on. They still stand as examples of the work being done which for which we later coined the phrase 'a psychologically informed environment' : HERE

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Meanwhile:

Simon Community Glasgow's Access Hub

 

 

 

The UK government guidance selections : HERE

Designing, engaging, thinking differently : HERE

More  PIEs case studies – a representative sample selection of new and used material, in alphabetical order.

(NB: many items are currently inaccessible online, through a technical fault. To access specific papers, please contact the editorial team)

A walk in the park – Paula Corcoran – on constructive use of the local environment to change relationships : HERE

Behaving like a system – Lankelly Chase – a pilot in Coventry, identifying markers of whole systems change HERE

Bell Hotel Supportive Housing Project -  PIEs in Housing First - single site permanent supported Recovery Housing  : Bell Hotell Supportive Housingn project-1

Complex needs and available data - Grant Everrett - gathering multiple datasets for mapping complex needs: exclusion-informed research Grant Everrett : HERE

Developing a psychological model (with PIEs 1) : learning from a Housing Association pilot - Aileen Edwards : HERE

Development at Father Bills – John Yaswinski and April Conolly - creative responses to finding new mental health needs from a pioneer of Housing First : HERE

Implementing a Psychologically Informed Environment in a service for young homeless people - Jeremy Woodcock & Jamie Gill -  attachment theory in action; becoming a learning organisation : HERE

Pre-treatment therapy –  John Conolly - applications of PIEs and pretreatment in therapy settings  :  Coming Soon

Street Buddies – Louise Simonsen - the subtlety of unmeasurable engagement : HERE

Veterans Community Project, Kansas City – Kevin Jamieson - community and peer support in transitional housing :  HERE

Well-being by design: the questions you might ask - Genesis Housing Association - a simple tool for judging how the environment might feel : HERE

Westminster City’ Ten Top Tips - Victoria Aseervatham – medium- low- and no cost changes HERE

Women at the Well – Caroline Hattersley - all systems negotiation – spaces of opportunity - at WATW (Coming soon)

Y-Adapt - Y people – a clubhouse model for PIE implementation in a youth work service: development and community HERE

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NB, we are currently working on a more general intro : HERE

But for the moment, many inks there are not yet operative,