Trauma-informed Design Guides SCO Household Of Providers Clinic

SCO Family of Services gives kids and households all through New York Metropolis and Lengthy Island entry to a continuum of care that features bodily and psychological well being, wellness, schooling, housing, household youth justice companies, and household assist.

Whereas the group operates a number of areas round Jamaica, Queens, its Genovese Household Life Heart serves because the hub of the group’s programming within the neighborhood.

Nevertheless, after years in operation, the middle was feeling the constraints of its growing old constructing. “It was an previous maze of workplaces and corridors and lifeless ends,” says Hayden Blades, vp of services and property administration for SCO Household of Providers. “We needed to deliver a recent look to the area and make it extra environment friendly.”

Making a renovation plan

The aim was to renovate the present four-story constructing, which the group owned, with trendy, versatile shopper areas and workspaces. SCO Household of Providers aimed to consolidate employees working in different leased areas into the renovated location to enhance employees efficiencies in addition to cut back actual property prices.

Moreover, the renovation would offer the chance to make use of design methods that assist its purchasers, a lot of whom have gone by means of traumatic experiences and obtain counseling and assist companies on the heart. “We needed them to have an area the place they felt protected and cozy,” Blades says.

Contemporary healthcare facility

Opened in October 2022, the constructing’s first flooring homes a lot of the public-facing companies such because the foster care program’s medical clinic, which features a ready space, two examination rooms, clinician workplaces, and phlebotomy lab.

On the identical flooring, the foster care household visiting room gives a big, inviting space for delivery mother and father to carry supervised visits with their kids.

The higher ranges every have public-facing rooms for psychological well being counseling in addition to redesigned employees workspaces. Within the latter, enclosed workplaces had been changed with open-floor layouts and different settings that assist totally different wants, together with shared cubicles organized alongside the perimeter to maximise pure gentle on the flooring and convention and counseling rooms housed within the core.

Using trauma-informed design

Working with Spacesmith (New York), the mission staff utilized ideas of trauma-informed design to ship a setting that promotes therapeutic all through the constructing. For instance, using research that present curvilinear types in inside settings could make folks really feel extra serene than rectilinear shapes, the mission staff designed all 90-degree corners and hall soffits in tender curves.

Biophilic parts are additionally employed all through, corresponding to nature-themed wallcoverings within the examination rooms and gender-neutral loos and woodgrain doorways and carpeting with a stone-like sample.

“The thought is to get away from an institutional really feel to one thing that’s going to make folks really feel welcome, relaxed, and calm,” says Ambar Margarida, principal at Spacesmith.

Addressing security in healthcare environments

Within the former atmosphere, the middle utilized institutional furnishings that had been bolted to the ground to handle safety wants.

Through the renovation, Margarida says the mission staff targeted on addressing security with out impacting the general aesthetic. For instance, within the reception space, exhausting, plastic chairs had been changed with weighted, high-backed tender furnishings in curvilinear configurations.

Blade says the brilliant and ethereal area has been nicely obtained by employees and purchasers. “Everybody who comes within the area is awed by the transformation,” he says.

Anne DiNardo is govt editor of Healthcare Design. She might be reached at [email protected].