Cambridge Children’s Hospital is about more than a new hospital building. It is about a unique, world-first model of care that treats the whole child – wherever they are being cared for. Our ambition is to deliver seamless, integrated physical and mental health care, underpinned by ground-breaking research from the University of Cambridge in a ‘hospital without walls’.
Plans submitted to Cambridge City Council in September 2021 in a formal planning application detailed early designs for Cambridge Children’s Hospital when it opens. The current plans have been designed to maximise the available clinical space for both mental and physical health within the Cambridge Children’s Hospital building, and to prioritise those services that must be co-located. The model of care at Cambridge Children's Hospital will allow for new ways of working; we will provide more of the care children and young people need closer to the places they already know - their schools and colleges, their family GP and in the local community – and away from the hospital environment, including by making the most of new and emerging technological developments. In this context, and because of resource and space constraints, the plans do not include full outpatients provision. However, they do allow for greatly increased diagnostic capacity for outpatients. The plans also outline opportunities for future development on the site, which could include paediatric outpatients.
Work is ongoing to find ways to assess and care for children with the most complex needs within the Cambridge Children’s Hospital building, as well as in the community and through streamlined and enhanced pathways at Addenbrooke’s. We have submitted an Outline Business Case for Cambridge Children’s Hospital. Following the outcome of that we will seek to establish a working group to consider how outpatient provision will be delivered as part of the CCH project in a way that supports this new integrated model of care, and is better for children and their families. When we establish the working group we will recruit patients, carers and staff to ensure their views and concerns are heard and considered. We want to ensure that this element of paediatric care is co-produced in the same way as the new hospital itself. This work will also factor in the implications of the national reorganisation of outpatients, which is currently underway.
Please do get in touch at contact@cambridgechildrens.org.uk if you would like to be involved in the working group when it is established.