Take a tour of the St Aubyn Centre – a new £9m inpatient complex in Colchester for 11- to 18-year-olds with severe mental health problems – and you are left with a nagging sense of familiarity.
Then, Lizzy Melless, the centre’s operational manager, pins it down. “A lot of them [the young people] have referred to it as the Big Brother house,” she says. “It’s quite modern and the environment is very colourful. We joke and they say it’s like the Big Brother house and I say you know you’re being watched – by staff, not by cameras.”
Opened in June, St Aubyn, a project of the North Essex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, could not look less like a hospital. It is slightly jarring to be informed that the building contains two wards, with a total of 25 beds.
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