The Children's Health Park ‘Community Chest’

August 2011

Director of the Forestry Commission in North West England, Keith Jones (pictured below), believes the Children's Health Park could bring social and economic stability to the neighbourhood.

Keith Jones, Director of the Forestry Commission in North West England is a man on a mission.

He chairs the 'Children's Health Park (CHP), Parks for Health Committee', which brings together members of the CHP Project Team, with external experts such as the Mersey Forest, Groundwork Merseyside, University of Liverpool, the Environment Agency, Liverpool City Council, Land Restoration Trust, the NW Development Agency, the National Wildflower Centre and key Trust staff.

The Committee’s aims include advising the Trust on the establishment of a set of proposals for the redevelopment of Springfield Park, currently next to Alder Hey, so that the hospital and the park are more closely integrated. The Children’s Health Park will be built next door on what is now Springfield Park. The land that Alder Hey stands on will be fully landscaped and given back to the community. It is hoped that this will promote the economic and social environmental regeneration and raise the profile of the health agenda for the surrounding communities.

“There is no question that Alder Hey is a centre for clinical excellence. However, with the construction of the Children's Health Park, this is the ideal time not only to invest in a new hospital but reach beyond the boundaries of the health park to the local community. It would be unreasonable to invest in this multi million pound new build for it not to have a greater benefit to the community it serves,” states Keith.

Those greater benefits range from supplying recreational facilities in the health park grounds to encourage a fit and active community, to enabling the children and young people of the community to observe and undertake a pro-active role in shadowing staff from all service areas. This will help ignite career aspirations so that the workforce of the future is drawn from the neighbourhood.

Keith explains: “Demographically, some parts of Alder Hey and surrounding areas such as Old Swan, Kensington and Dovecot contain some of the highest rates of deprivation[1] in England.

“It simply makes sense to encourage our current generation of local primary school age children to work hard, focus on a career goal to work in the health park and earn their living locally. The health park will exist for the whole of their working lives and when the time comes for their families also.”

With up to 30 local primary and secondary schools on the ‘doorstep’ of Alder Hey, suddenly the idea of someone finding a dream job - whether that is clinical, managerial or service based work in the area they live - begins to make perfect sense.

Keith firmly believes that visits by Alder Hey hospital representatives (including both clinical and non-clinical members of staff) to children as young as primary school age could plant the seed that staying in the area and contributing to its economic stability by working at the Children’s Health Park will not only boost the local economy and raise the standard of living, but will help improve the environment by encouraging the local workforce to walk and cycle to work. Indeed, the Children’s Health Park will have cycle bays for over a hundred cycles.

Keith says: “Statistics show that the majority of Alder Hey staff drive in to work, some from over 50 miles away. It really needn’t be like that with a change in culture in both the Children’s Health Park and neighbouring communities. As a world class exemplar, the Trust must consider their wider neighbourhood, and be seen as a gateway to the city of Liverpool. This, in turn, will promote civic pride in the area.”

Without question there are many relevant factors that should encourage people to stay, work and play in the suburbs nearest to the Children’s Health Park.

“The benefits are endless.” believes Keith. “The Health Park will be the benchmark for health provision and preventative care on the world platform; therefore, it must tangibly benefit the community too. It’s doing the right thing, by the right people in the right place.”

1. As ranked by the Government’s Index of Deprivation 2011.

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