Birmingham Children’s Hospital entrance set for £3 million transformation
The trust's charity have launched the appeal to make the reception area more inviting.
Last updated 18th Jul 2024
A hospital in Birmingham's hoping to make their entrance building more inviting to patients with a reception transformation .
The charity at Birmingham Women's and Children's Hospital NHS Trust have launched an appeal for £3 million to start the build towards the end of the year.
Last updated nearly three decades ago, the existing main entrance is cramped, dull and unwelcoming and doesn’t reflect the world-class care that takes place beyond it. Feedback from families has found they find the existing entryway stressful to navigate and it doesn’t put them or their children at ease.
The £3m It Starts Here Appeal will totally transform the front entrance of Birmingham Children’s Hospital into a welcoming and child-friendly space, to help reduce the fear and anxiety of patients – ahead of appointments.
The charity’s It Starts Here Appeal will change this, overhauling the entire ‘first impression’ of Birmingham Children’s Hospital.
The new interior design, which is being developed with patients, families and staff, will see it transformed into a welcoming, child-friendly, open and bright space which reflects the needs of everyone who uses it.
Liz Hession is one of these parents. Her twin boys, Seb and Alex, were born three months premature in February 2020. At just two days old, Seb had a grade four bleed on his brain and needed emergency surgery to insert a shunt. He was transferred in the middle of the night to the paediatric intensive care unit (PICU) at Birmingham Children’s Hospital for the operation.
Liz explains: “Having never been to the hospital before, we found it difficult to know if we’d even made it to the right place. The building doesn’t look like a children’s hospital. Once inside, our first impression wasn’t great. We were faced with a long, dark corridor. We were stressed, exhausted and unsure of how to get to our baby. The care we’ve received from everyone at the hospital has been exceptional, but the new front entrance will transform the experience for families like ours.”