About Us

Alder Hey Children's NHS Foundation Trust is one of Europe’s biggest and busiest children’s hospitals providing care for over 200,000 children and young people each year. It is one of only four stand-alone paediatric trusts in UK and is staffed by 2,800 employees.

Alder Hey offers 20 specialist services including being the designated national centre for head and face surgery and a Centre of Excellence for children with cancer, heart, spinal and brain disease. It is a teaching hospital and trains 550 medical and 400 nursing students each year.

Alder Hey serves a catchment area of 7.5 million, with around 60,000 children seen at A&E each year. In addition to the hospital site at West Derby, Alder Hey has a presence at more than 40 community outreach sites and programmes and its consultants hold 800 clinic sessions each year from Cumbria to Shropshire, Wales and the Isle of Man, helping deliver care closer to home.

Alder Hey is a top performing Trust, rated ‘Excellent’ by the independent Healthcare Commission for the last six consecutive years, which puts it in the top two per cent of Trusts nationally. To achieve this:

- 88 per cent of patients are now treated within 18 weeks
- All outpatients are seen within five weeks
- 98 per cent of A&E patients are seen within four hours
- Lowest MRSA infection rates in the North West of England
- 'Excellent' PEAT score for Cleanliness, Food and Environment
- It is England’s first paediatric health promoting hospital accredited by the World Health Organisation.

Alder Hey hosts the UK Medicines for Children Research Network (MCRN) with a Department of Health grant worth £22m and is also the lead centre for the Cheshire, Merseyside and North Wales MCRN. It leads the field in paediatric pharmacovigilance, being recently awarded the only paediatric NHS programme grant (£2m) for work in this area.

Founded in 1914, Alder Hey was originally intended as a workhouse for infirm paupers and the Trust is now engaged in planning a new, state-of-the-art Children's Health Park at the adjacent Springfield Park. The Trust hopes to open its doors to the new hospital in October 2014, marking its 100th Anniversary.

Alder Hey is supported by two registered charities, The Imagine Appeal and Ronald McDonald House. The Imagine Appeal was launched in 2005 and has the support of Yoko Ono who allowed a sketch by John Lennon to be used as the logo. Since its launch the Imagine fundraising team has secured support from many national companies and a number of high profile celebrity patrons. Ronald McDonald House is the biggest purpose-built House in the world with 70 rooms and provides a 'home away from home' for parents of children who are being treated in the hospital. The House is funded and run entirely by charitable donations.