Today is Earth Day. In terms of sustainability, Victoria Gardens, a rehabilitation service in Merseyside, is leading the way. We spoke with Jamie Devine – Social Activities Co-ordionator and Louise Kennedy, Psychology Lead at the service, to find out more.
“Victoria Gardens supports 40 men and women with mental
health difficulties, personality disorder and/or a learning disability. Based in Huyton, on the outskirts of Liverpool, the aim of the service is to support people through their rehabilitation journey to prepare them to live independently in the community. We want to help patients develop their functional and psychological skills to do that successfully.”
“We’re in quite an urban area with limited green space and were keen to explore what we could do to support Elysium’s strategic objective to achieve Net Zero by 2040. We wanted to review what we were already doing, and what we could do more of. since March last year, we’ve been involved in various different projects. Individually, they are relatively small, but combined they are making a big difference.”
“We started off looking at recycling within the hospital. We recognised that education was important and began with a visit to a local recycling plant which delivers educational sessions, and it was fantastic to get that perspective. The patients and staff who visited, gained lots of knowledge and it helped to improve their motivation to engage with the project. We could all see the potential impact of taking certain actions – it created a sense of understanding and urgency of WHY we need to do these things, and it was really powerful for everyone. The project has snowballed from there.”
“Following that, we also started a pledge to Keep Britain Tidy and committed to filling 135 bags of litter because we saw how much litter was discarded in our local area. We not only met that target, but exceeded it! It’s had a massive impact on the sense of well-being for the people we support; in addition to encouraging exercise, they have also been able to instantly see the positive impact their actions have had. It has helped build connections with the local community too; we have received lots of positive feedback from residents who are grateful for the work we have been doing. ”
“We have set up a sustainability project team 
which is made up of staff and patients, which meets monthly. It generates lots of ideas and helps maintain everyone’s motivation to continue. Another successful idea generated by the group was our vape recycling project, stopping them going into landfill.”
“We also have a clinical waste management project ongoing, which is being delivered as a quality improvement project. This is aimed at reducing medication waste within our clinic rooms, in addition to introducing recycling and reducing single use plastics. ”
“We’ve reduced the use of single use plastics elsewhere in the service and staff are encouraged to bring in their own reusable Tupperware for lunches., it’s about looking at every aspect of day-to-day life here through that green lens and we’re finding the more people are educated, the more they jump onboard and are willing to try things and get more involved.”
“For example, we’ve identified that it would be beneficial environmentally to do “Meat Free Monday”, an idea from our catering team. Every discipline is involved.”
“Going forward we want to help people access green space as much as possible and have already done a lot of work to encourage patients here to utilise their Section 17 to visit local parks and other green spaces. On site itself, we plan to improve our outdoor space and increase the number of areas we have where people can spend time outside. We want to encourage more interaction with nature, including developing a herb garden and sensory area as well as insect boxes, increasing the bio-diversity around the site.”