Needs

Psychologically informed environments can be defined - at least for practical purposes - as services that go out of their way to ensure that they are aware of and responsive to the psychological and emotional needs of the individuals who use and make up the environment of the services.

NB: Such a definition includes being aware of the psychological and emotional needs of staff, and especially, giving due recognition to the emotional wear-and tear of working with people with complex needs often challenging behaviour. That aspect of the work is the focus of the Staff Training and Support pages here; and we also address what we mean by 'psychological and emotional needs', and 'awareness', in the section on "Psychological Awareness".

Here. we focus of the needs of the client or user group, as specified, typically, by the funding and/or the 'mission' of the service. There is no definitive list here - its arguable that ALL services need to be more aware of mental health and trauma. Its equally arguable that all services need to find better ways to work with peoples strengths and motivations - of both service users and staff - to help bring the best out of them.

But here we aim to provide links to some of the most useful material, ideas, research and inspiration, organised in terms of some specific needs:

Youth
Age
'Complex needs'
Rough sleepers ('unsheltered')
Domestic violence
Substance abuse
Diversity

PIELink

Needs

More specifics

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