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Mental health clothing bank - adDressing the issue

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 June 2021

Louisa Ward
Louisa Ward*
Affiliation:
Worcestershire health and care NHS trust
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Abstract

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Aims

We often have patients who are admitted to the ward wearing only the clothes they came in. These patients have no way of going to get more clothes due to being detained, poverty/ homelessness or covid restrictions. Many do not have friends or family who can bring them clothes. As such they might wear one set of clothes for a number of weeks which is bad for their physical and mental health. We are creating a clothes bank to provide a change of clothes for these patients, and help their recovery back into the community. Many have clothes that are inappropriate for the current weather, or do not have a set of smart enough clothes for a job interview. We feel that this simple intervention will have a big community impact.

Method

We have obtained support from a number of charities and companies to supply donations. The project will be led by a team of staff and patients.

Result

We will review the usage of this scheme in 6 months time

Conclusion

We hope this intervention will tackle the issue of clothing on mental health wards. In the future we wish to expand this to outpatient mental health service users. We would then like to expand this project countrywide as are unaware of any other areas providing something similar.

Type
Quality Improvement
Information
BJPsych Open , Volume 7 , Supplement S1: Abstracts of the RCPsych Virtual International Congress 2021, 21–24 June , June 2021 , pp. S226
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Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Royal College of Psychiatrists
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