What do we do?
The Haldon Unit is dedicated to providing care for those affected by eating disorders. The unit is situated within Wonford House Hospital in Exeter, has twelve beds and accepts both female and male patients from 16 years old, from across the South West Peninsula. The unit opened in September 2006, following a successful 18 month pilot project undertaken at North Devon District Hospital in Barnstaple.
Our aims:
- To offer individual and personalised care to help each person overcome the restrictions imposed on them by eating disorders
- To offer a safe and effective treatment programme delivered in a consistent and predictable way, by staff who are skilled, patient and caring
- To encourage open discussion about the expectations on all patients and staff during their time on the unit, so that they feel informed and involved in the way the unit runs
- To view inpatient admissions as an important part of people’s recovery within the context of ongoing work by the community team and the person’s family support
- For the physical environment of the unit to be homely, relaxing, welcoming and reassuring and to offer privacy, space and access to a place to sit and relax outside.
Our values:
Our values permeate everything we do and are shown in all
our interactions with patients, carers, inpatient staff and referring teams. They are:
- Patients are supported to make choices and shared decisions about their own health care
- The treatment programme is of high quality and reliably and consistently delivered by the clinical team
- Excellent communication with relatives about leave arrangements and visiting arrangements.
- Offering many supportive opportunities to try out new or less familiar ways of behaving
- Maintaining links and contact with friends, colleagues, pets, work and study is encouraged
throughout admission
- Staff maintain an optimistic outlook about each person’s potential to improve
- The clinical team enquires respectfully about family’s past to avoid unwanted intrusiveness and
over-emphasis on the past.
- Patients are offered personal and individualised care to help each person overcome the restriction
imposed by eating disorders
- Inpatient staff to look to community team colleagues to learn from, and work with them about how
best to help a patient’s recovery
- Relatives’ views and preferences are actively sought, listened to and taken seriously by the clinical team.
- Individual psychotherapy and psychologically-orientated group work are available for each patient
to explore ‘myself as a person’
- Patients’ views are actively sought in improving the service, through audit, group therapy evaluation
and research projects
- Staff strive to remain curious about the development and maintenance of current difficulties as well
as hopeful about different solutions
- A research culture within the unit values the work being done on the unit, and highlights the importance
of learning from the experiences of patients.
- At the end of each leave from the unit, carers and patients are asked for feedback about how the time
off the unit has been.
- The involvement of patients is central to all treatment and care
- Inpatient staff view themselves as one-team with community team colleagues
- Common understandings are drawn on to develop a shared clinical formulation
- Carers are viewed as integral to maintaining inpatient treatment gains
- Counselling is made available to support relatives and parents if this is requested.
- Practice in dealing with food in settings outside the inpatient unit, with relatives, carers and
professional staff is a crucial part of a patient’s final phase of an inpatient stay
- Staff seek to help patients to maximise the successful transfer of skills gained in the inpatient
setting.
- Staff positively receive enquiries from relatives seeking help at any point after formal discharge;
with senior clinician following up this kind of enquiry to ensure appropriate support is offered
- Patients and relatives are confident of receiving a warm reception if they were to re-contact the
service after a long break of contact to make an enquiry or request for further advice or help.
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