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Informed choices: Testing guidance for products in Mental Health Facilities.
Until now, there hasn’t been a standardised method of evaluating products for use in mental health settings. However BRE (Building research establishment) have provided a solution from collaboration with the Design in Mental Health Network (DiMHN) BRE has developed a detailed testing guide for products being fitted into safety facilities.
The BRE has produced a testing guidance for products in Mental Health. Providing testing methodologies for materials, fixtures and hardware that have been specifically designed for use within care facilities, bringing together the many requirements into one report to help manufacturers understand the safety of their product and it’s performance when tested to the maximum.
Back in March ALS began BRE Testing our products. In a market where safety is paramount it was of high importance to us to ensure our products meet safety standards needed to be fitted into such environments. The products taken were put through ligature resistant testing where the products are evaluated using different ligature tools to try and create an anchor point and discover the degree of difficulty for the products design to resist the different types of attack. The engineers will always be looking for the weakest points and worse-case scenarios when conducting tests.
For safety environments it is vital that the products are robust and strong, along with the ligature testing BRE also perform robust testing to evaluate its resilience under various conditions ensuring it performs and remains functional despite adverse or extreme conditions. All products are tested to dynamic loads through impact tests. Large soft, small soft and hard body impacts are used to determine how a product may fail or break and determine the serviceability of products.
Both the J-TRAC face fix, top fix and the Max 5/10 coat hooks endured ligature testing and robustness testing to ensure that they meet the standards needed to reduce the risk of harm in environments. Both teams at ALS and Healsafe were very pleased with the result of the testing and the final report. If you would like to hear more about the testing and the performance of these products get in touch with the team.
ALS are currently in the process of having more products tested to ensure we only provide the safest of products into care environments.
If you would like to find out more about Anti-Ligature Shops BRE testing and the products tested get in touch with team- Call: 03330 536020 or Email: info@anti-ligature-shop.co.uk
