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This paper aims to offer a commentary on Psychologically Informed Services: A Good Practice Guide, a recently published operational guidance document on developing psychologically informed environments (PIEs) in services for homeless people.

The paper is an invited opinion piece and comment, based on the specialist experience and viewpoint of the author as a rehabilitation psychiatrist, a medical historian of the therapeutic community movement, and a member of the “enabling environments” development group.

The new operational guidance is welcomed, with some provisos. Specifically, the author is concerned that, in the prevailing commissioning culture, and the individual pathology‐based presumptions of the “medical model”, a focus on the “psychological” may be taken to mean a stress on individual psychology and therapeutic techniques derived from individual therapy. This may distract attention from the need to work with the whole social environment, with peer support and with recognition of the importance of informal interactions, as opportunities for growth, if services are to work with the whole person.

Services that wish to develop as PIEs need to take care to work with the whole person, and their social selves, and to develop enabling environments that recognise and work with the importance of all relationships.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight theoretical and clinical similarities between therapeutic communities (TCs) and group analysis (GA).

Literature review shows comparison of TC and group-analytic concepts with illustrative case material.

Findings reveal many similarities between TCs and GA, but also significant divergences, particularly in practice.

This paper provides theoretical basis for TC practice, and highlights the need for greater theorising of TC practice.

This paper highlights the importance of group-based treatment approaches in mental health.

This is the first paper to review the relevant literature and compare theory and practice in TCs and GA, highlighting their common roots in the Northfields Experiments in the Second World War.

This study aims to explore the perceptions of staff in four teams regarding the implementation of psychologically informed environments (PIE) across a community service and three hostels supporting individuals facing severe and multiple disadvantage.

Using a pre-post design, the PIEs Assessment and Self-Development for Services (known as the Pizazz) was completed by staff before the implementation of PIEs and at a six-month follow-up. A narrative review of the results and thematic analysis of the qualitative data are presented.

The majority of the Pizazz elements were rated as improved following PIE implementation. Thematic analysis developed three themes influencing staff members’ ability to develop a PIE: Complexities of Our and Wider Systems; Ready-made or Baked from Scratch; and Reflective and Responsive Staff.

A planned one-year follow-up was obstructed by the coronavirus pandemic, limiting understanding of longer-term impact. Having only gathered data from staff members, the results cannot corroborate staff members’ perceptions. Further research could explore other stakeholder perspectives, as well as the impact of PIE implementation on staff perception of resources, and of a possible ceiling effect for hostels trying to develop PIE.

To the authors’ best of knowledge, this is the first UK study to use the Pizazz to evaluate the implementation of PIE.

The purpose of this paper is to consider the changes underway in the delivery of services to children and young people in schools, not least that OFTSED will soon be routinely carrying out an assessment of mental health provision in schools. This paper considers the policy context to these changes and the recent initiatives that are informing the evolution of initial teacher training. Alongside the changes in Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services there are an increasing number of schools developing counselling and psychotherapy services. How can the School counsellor look to develop a who school as therapeutic community.

A case narrative is presented of a seven-year-old child who was referred to the school counselling service. The narrative draws attention to the array of dynamic interactions, from peers to teachers to parents which the school counselling manager encountered.

It is argued that it is necessary for the school counsellor to have a framework for understanding how all parts of the school work together and it is proposed that we might usefully consider the primary school as a therapeutic community.

There are a raft of policy changes and practices in recent years that have altered the landscape of early intervention and the mental health agenda in primary schools. This paper captures this debates and consider how therapeutic community ideology is positioned as an opportunity to think more expansively about mental health in primary schools.

This study aims to share reflections on psychologically informed practice and research that has taken place within Opportunity Nottingham and in collaboration with local hostels and agencies. This study conveys a call to action to all stakeholders not to be complacent, but to use learning from Fulfilling Lives as a foundation for future developments.

This study will use the psychologically informed environments (PIEs) 2.0 elements to structure points of learning from working within Opportunity Nottingham, drawing on wider literature as appropriate. This will allow focus on core areas of interest for all stakeholders and illustrate how the PIE elements can be embedded in thinking.

Research-informed reflections from a Fulfilling Lives Clinical Psychologist will be offered across the domains of: psychological awareness; staff training and support; learning and enquiry; spaces of opportunity; and rules, roles and responsiveness.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this will be the first paper to use PIE domains to structure a reflective account of learning from a Fulfilling Lives project, contextualised within broader literature.

Trusting and empathic relationships between project workers and people experiencing homelessness (PEH) form the cornerstone for their needs to be met. However, under the UK austerity agenda project workers practice in a context of increasing pressure and limited resources; with relationships often characterised by conditionality and disconnection. The purpose of this paper is to report on a study investigating project workers’ experiences of building relationships with PEH living in supported housing projects.

A qualitative design was employed in which focus groups were carried out in six projects, using an opportunity sample of 22 project workers. Data were analysed using thematic analysis, within a social constructionist epistemology.

Three main themes were identified: “Working hard to build connection”, “Supporting each other within an unsupportive context” and “Draining but sustaining”. Project workers acted out of strong value systems in building relationships with residents against a backdrop of systemic disconnection.

Clear clinical implications are put forward with in a Psychologically Informed Environment framework. Services supporting PEH need to be psychologically informed and organisations need to embed reflection within their policies and every day practice. In developing services for PEH interdependence not in/dependence needs to be the aim. Finally, the responsibility for improving the lives of PEH should be placed back on society to provide a context in which PEH can thrive.

Although the idea of a therapeutic community (TC) has lost none of its dynamism, there are many modern‐day environments in which the original TC model has been unable to make headway. In recent years, new ideas have been emerging for the development of institutions and services that can be adapted to a wide range of psychological needs and settings, such as homelessness hostels and refuges. The psychologically‐informed environment (PIE) arises from the scope for reflective practice, leading to changes in day‐to‐day working ‐ including a more planned variant for high secure services. The PIE approach seems to offer greater flexibility in scope than the TC model. Nevertheless, such new approaches may yet need a clear values base; and the next article in this series will explore new ideas for the creation of ‘enabling environments’ in a still wider range of settings.

Many homeless people have significant levels of early adverse experiences and consequent mental health difficulties. The purpose of this paper is to examine the experiences of residents and staff living and working in a psychologically informed environment (PIE), a new model of hostel for homeless people which aims to update and make more flexible the principles of the therapeutic community, thereby meeting the psychological and emotional needs of residents.

Semi-structured interviews were carried out with nine residents, ten staff and five psychotherapists at two PIE hostels in London. The data were analysed using thematic analysis with a phenomenological epistemological approach.

Analysis generated 18 themes for residents and staff combined, organised into five domains: what makes a home, resident needs, managing relationships, reflective practice and theory vs practice of PIEs. The study suggests that PIEs broadly meet their aim in providing a different type of environment from standard hostels. Efforts to build relationships with residents are particularly prioritised. This work can be challenging for staff and reflective practice groups provide a supportive forum. There are limits to the extent to which the theoretical PIE can be put into practice in the current political and economic climate.

This is one of the first qualitative studies of PIEs. It provides perspectives on their theoretical background as well as how they operate and are experienced in practice. It may be informative to services intending to establish a PIE and to commissioners in assessing appropriate resources.

A ‘psychologically informed environment’, or PIE, is the first of many new concepts that have spun off from the Royal College of Psychiatrists' Enabling Environments (EE) initiative. Based on the early developments in the therapeutic community movement, and adapting these values and principle to the 21st century world of community mental health, the EE initiative attempts to identify the key features in any setting that fosters a sense of connected belonging; and suggests a process by which these principles can then be customised for specific settings. The implications for a new social psychiatry at the heart of any future public mental health and social policy are clear; and to be pursued further in the final paper in this trilogy.

This paper aims to describe the origins of the concept of a psychologically informed environment (PIE), as now adopted and applied in homelessness resettlement, placing this in the context of work recently carried out under the aegis of the Royal College of Psychiatrists' Centre for Quality Improvement to recognise and promote “enabling environments” in all areas of social practice.

This paper gives an historical account of the contemporary development of new thinking and practical applications for enhancing community mental health and well‐being.

The concept of an enabling environment (EE) arose out of efforts to up‐date for the twenty‐first century the post‐war concept of a therapeutic community, for all services working with the same basic core values and psycho‐social awareness. The EE approach now applies this framework more flexibly, yet with a clear operational focus in each sector, to a wider range of organisational contexts, social practice and agencies outside the therapy and care services world. From the outset, homelessness resettlement and social housing practice was seen as a key part of the overall ambition.

Understanding the values base behind social‐psychological approaches in social practice environments helps to translate these ideas into service‐led improvements in actual frontline services practice. In particular, the enabling environments approach offers a handy tool for self‐assessment and service improvement, which is fully compatible with the PIE's philosophy.

The concept of a PIE is currently acquiring momentum within homelessness resettlement work in the UK. In helping to establish the underlying values framework for psychologically‐informed services; and also provide tools for such services to use, this paper makes a contribution to help inform developing practice.