Men's Mental Health - Deaf Service - medium secure

The largest UK medium secure service for deaf men aged between 18 and 65 years old.

Fairbairn is a 15 bed ward in purpose-built medium secure service which manages deaf or hearing impaired (profound, severe, partial or hard of hearing) patients’ with complex mental illness in a culturally sensitive environment.

The ward accepts patients with a wide range of diagnosis including mental illness, learning disability, brain injury, autism spectrum disorder or personality disorder.

Over a third of our nursing team are deaf and all staff and patients are trained in British Sign Language (BSL) ensuring greater engagement within the unit and participation in therapy. With only 15 beds we are able to provide patients with tailored interventions and support them in building relationships with fellow patients to aid recovery and create a sense of belonging.

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Ward based BSL interpreters

Admissions criteria

For males aged between 18 and 65 with a hearing impairment profound, severe or partial hard of hearing who may show evidence of:

suspected mental illness
learning disability
brain injury
autistic spectrum disorder
personality disorder
be detained under the Mental Health Act 1983

Treatment and care

Our service is person-centred and includes assessment (including communication assessment), treatment, relapse prevention and rehabilitation.

Treatment is delivered based upon the therapeutic community principles of attachment, containment, communication and involvement in order to deliver high-quality safe care in a culturally sensitive and linguistically appropriate way.

All therapy and interventions that are delivered in an individualised manner taking into account the individual patients preference regards to mode of communication.
All information concerning patient’s treatment is delivered in an adapted format relevant to the patients communication needs.

We aim to exceed the recommended 25 hours of meaningful activity.

Next steps

Discharge is considered at admission and our clinical and social work teams work with appropriate case managers to support a transition.