Every year, tens of thousands of parents are separated from their children during a psychiatric hospital stay, with no standard way to make visits less distressing. This matters because current hospital visiting provision is poor—unwelcoming family rooms, inconsistent staff procedures, and a lack of information for children and carers. The separation can worsen the parent’s mental state and harm the child’s psychosocial and educational development. The project aims to fix this by co-producing a Family Visit Pack: template room designs and signage, a staff checklist, and accessible resources for families. If successful, the pack would be a low-cost, scalable intervention that could be rolled out across psychiatric wards. It would give families a sense of control, social support, and positive distraction during visits—reducing stress for both parent and child. The work is applied and practical, designed for immediate use in NHS settings once its effectiveness is established.
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Background Of 97,000 psychiatric inpatient admissions in 2022 an estimated 25% had dependent children. Treating parents in hospital requires separation of parent and child, often following a period of acute mental illness. This separation is distressing, can exacerbate parental distress and is associated with impaired psychosocial and educational outcomes for the child. Currently, the provision for child visitation in psychiatric hospitals is poor. This is due to inhospitable family rooms, inconsistent ward procedures and lack of informational materials for child and carer. Inadequate visitation provision can hinder parent-child connection during hospitalisation. Conversely, supportive design which fosters a perception of control, facilitates social support and offers positive distraction can reduce stress and foster wellbeing in users. This project seeks to improve and standardise family visitation provision through the generation of prototype environmental enhancements (e.g., to family room and signage), a checklist for healthcare professionals and accessible, appropriate information resources for children and carers. Aims and objectives Co-produce a Family Visit Pack for use in psychiatric inpatient units, comprising template family rooms and environmental enhancements; checklist to standardise staff procedures during visitation; and template resources for carers and children. Methods The project will be delivered in two sequential work packages. Work package 1) national mixed methods project to gather stakeholder recommendations for improvements for visitation provision. This will involve online interviews with parents (current and prior inpatient; n=12-16), children and young people(8-18years; n=6-10), carers(n=6-10) and healthcare professionals(n=12-16) recruited both from the NHS and the community to explore how they experience provision and what they would improve. Findings will inform a questionnaire delivered online to parents(n=50), healthcare professionals(n=25) and carers(n=25) in which participants will rank the importance of target improvements identified in the interviews. Work package 2) Co-production of scalable intervention package (Family Visit Pack). Components will be developed through a multi-stage co-production process involving experts-by-experience (parents(≥3), children and young people(≥3), experts-by-occupation (research team) and healthcare stakeholders(≥3). Workshops will be held online and in person to develop and refine each intervention component drawing upon findings from work package 1), the knowledge of the stakeholders and principles of environmental psychology. A two-month case series test will be conducted on one ward before the components are finalised by the co-production team and the Family Visit Pack is produced in print and/or digital form. Timelines for delivery Year one: data collection, analysis of work package one and start of co-production process. Year two: dissemination of work package one findings, completion of co-production process, Family Visit Pack finalised for trial. Anticipated impact and dissemination The project aims to improve provision for psychiatric inpatients who are parents and their children to benefit the health and wellbeing of both. The Family Visit Pack is designed to be a low cost and scalable intervention which can disseminated rapidly once efficacy is established. A range of outputs including academic publications, webinar, lay report, conference presentations and a video will support knowledge exchange in the short and medium term including to stimulate engagement with provision for families amongst commissioners and ward management.
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