Heartlands Hospital Charity opens playground to help young patients

On 3 April Heartlands Hospital Charity launched the newly refurbished Children’s Outpatients play area at Heartlands Hospital, so that young patients visiting for appointments and treatment have a safe place to play and distract them.

Being in hospital can be a scary time for adults let alone children, which is why we want to make the experience as relaxing as possible for our young patients as well as their family and the staff treating them. The new playground we have funded in the outpatient’s area gives children the chance to play in between appointments, which can take all day. Rather than sitting in a dull waiting area they have interactive games to play with and put them at ease. It also helps staff engage with their patients to distract them while they receive their treatment.

This refurbishment was possible, because of Heartlands Hospital Charity’s Children’s Appeal, which we re-launched last year. The goal was to help transform more of our Children's Outpatients Departments into welcoming environments for the young patients we see every year, during what can be a daunting time with repeat appointments.

We have already made a huge difference refurbishing the Children’s Wards, with bright and colourful decoration, as well as a fun and safe play area to help children recover from treatment. Young patients can stay on wards for weeks at a time, so having these fun spaces helps them to cope with being in hospital, and helps them and their families to feel comfortable, and process what can be a very difficult time.

Heartlands Hospital is part of University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust, which:

• Treats over 120,000 children each year.
• Many of our young patients have lifelong conditions which means they need to visit the hospital regularly.
• Our hospitals offer specialist treatment for cystic fibrosis, paediatric neurological disorders and paediatric HIV.
• We are home to the regional centre for neonatal services and the largest children’s radiotherapy centre outside of London.

We now want to help the Physiotherapy and Occupational Therapy Departments at Heartlands Hospital, by creating a bespoke play area, that will transform the way staff assess their young patients’ progress.

The new play area for the Physiotherapy and Occupational Therapy Team will be like the one created for outpatients but will be designed to support staff as they assess their young patients’ and help to improve the child’s development. The appointments can be lengthy and numerous throughout the year, so this will help to make them more fun and mean the children are more likely to look forward to coming to their appointments at Heartlands.

For more information on how to help our young patients thrive, head to our Children's Appeal page here.