A Whole New Way
Welcome to the eighth newsletter from the
Cambridge Children's Hospital project
The Whole Picture
An update from Deputy Project Director, Chris McNicholas
An update from Deputy Project Director, Chris McNicholas
Several members of our project team were thrilled to meet The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge at the Cambridgeshire County Day last month. Our clinical and research leads, architect and five teenagers from our Press Pack told The Duke and Duchess about our UK-first approach of integrating mental and physical health. They were also shown the plans for the building and our architect model. Seventeen-year-old Sarah, one of the young people from the Press Pack, has shared her reflections of the day, which she described as “momentous”. We are very grateful to the event organisers for choosing the hospital as one of two beneficiaries of the County Day.
In the last newsletter Project Director Alex White mentioned that we are making great strides with our fundraising campaign, which has a £100 million target, to match the funding from the Government to build our hospital. I am delighted to tell you we have now raised more than 25% of our fundraising target, which is an excellent milestone to reach. To read more about our campaign, please visit the Cambridge Children’s Hospital website.
We are moving onto the next RIBA stage of designing the hospital in September and will be working with our design team to finalise 50 standard rooms. Our staff, children, young people and families will be taking key roles in this stage, which develops how the rooms work alongside each other in the building, to help us continue to shape our hospital. We are very excited about getting to this stage in the design.
Since planning permission was granted for the early designs and floor plans in March, we have continued working on the Outline Business Case (OBC). We are planning to submit the OBC to NHSE/I and the Department of Health and Social Care in the Autumn. We will then begin to progress the Full Business Case (FBC) to develop our plans in more detail, including the funding required.
The construction and commissioning schedule for the hospital will be confirmed during the FBC stage in coordination with the government’s New Hospital Programme. There are a huge number of variables with a project the scale and size of Cambridge Children’s Hospital. This means the projected timescales for construction have to be regularly reviewed but construction is currently anticipated to start from 2024.
Have a wonderful summer
Chris
The Whole Community
It’s been a very busy few months for Cambridge Children’s Network!
Firstly, a huge thank you to our Cambridge Children’s Press Pack – Macie, Hannah, Alisha, Sarah and Olina - who were excellent project ambassadors at the recent Cambridgeshire County Day. They have created lots of interesting, creative and insightful content. We are now recruiting for a new group of young people; if you know someone who might be interested in taking part, please read more about the role. Our current Press Pack explain what their experience has been like in the video.
There are now eleven Co-production Champions embedded within the project, parents and carers who share their thoughts and ideas, provide challenge, and helping with decision-making. We are hugely grateful for their wisdom and also for giving up their time. You can read Kate’s account of her co-production journey here and watch our video about co-production at Cambridge Children’s Hospital.
Following on from the success of last year’s design workshops, we ran three more workshops between March and May. These focused on landscaping; ‘places to escape to’; and hospital bedrooms. It was lovely to see some familiar faces and welcome new ones. Do take a look at our artist’s beautiful illustrations of the conversations.
Children aged seven and under have also been thinking about their hospital school. Based on the ideas of Hannah, one of our parent Co-production Champions, Ellen from CUH Arts and artist Jacqui Campbell designed a fantastic art pack, with a little wooden ‘buddy’ to help children share their thoughts. We love Phoebe and Alice’s idea for an emoji carpet!
Finally, we are seeking views about how to best support children and young people with learning disabilities when they come into Cambridge Children’s Hospital. The ‘Top Three Priorities’ survey is online until the end of August, so there is plenty of time for you to have your say.
Our youngest members of Cambridge Children's Network have been sharing their ideas for the new hospital school through fun 'at home' art activities.
Our youngest members of Cambridge Children's Network have been sharing their ideas for the new hospital school through fun 'at home' art activities.
In May, we held our first in-person events for staff at Cambridge University Hospitals and at Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust (CPFT). Our clinical lead nurses and other members of the project team spoke to many staff, sharing the model of the hospital and answering questions on the floor plans, outdoor spaces and the integrated wards. A healthcare assistant from CPFT told us how beneficial it will be for patients to remove the stigma of separate mental health wards.
Our first drop-in roadshows for staff proved very popular
Our first drop-in roadshows for staff proved very popular
The Whole Child
Crown, from Luton, explains what it's like to live with a rare physical condition and how it impacts on mental health.
When Crown was 12, she was diagnosed with a rare genetic condition that she had never heard of. She had to attend many appointments at Great Ormond Street Hospital and said she internalised her problems, until she was referred to a psychologist.
"Having someone ask you how your mental health is would make such a difference. Children would grow up thinking that their mental health is important.”
Crown says the 'whole child' approach of Cambridge Children's Hospital will be great for this reason.
The Whole Life
Cambridge Children’s Hospital will feature an embedded University of Cambridge research institute, dedicated to improving the health of children and young people.
Our over-arching strategy, representing new thinking in the field of paediatrics, will be research on the origins of mental and physical health conditions to identify patients at risk. This will enable earlier interventions to improve the life course trajectories.
Our approach will account for the complexity of the environment, including psychosocial and economic circumstances. To this end, our research values diversity, equity and inclusion in the setting of the UK’s National Health Service.
The Research Institute will be on the ground floor of the hospital, a visible laboratory, housing 20 different research groups and 250 investigators. There will be a focus on addressing the top causes of death or disability in children and young people in the UK, with individual centres on perinatal care, genomic medicine, mental health and neurodevelopment, infection and inflammation, childhood cancer and diabetes and obesity. These will be led by experts in these fields from the University working hand in hand with NHS consultants.
Paediatrics is entering an exciting phase where we can have an even greater impact on the overall healthcare system. The care and research that will be delivered at Cambridge Children’s Hospital aims to set a course for the future.
Professor David Rowitch MD ScD FMedSci FRS
Head of Paediatrics, University of Cambridge
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