Ambition statement

Our Core Purpose:

To lead exceptional services for the health and well being of every child and young person

Our Core Values:

We are Focused on, Caring for and Committed to children and young people.

Our Audacious Goals:

• The West Midlands will have the healthiest children and young people in the UK
• We will be the partner of choice
• Children and young people will be healthy, protected, educated and treated with respect
• We will be an international leader of children and young people’s healthcare

Birmingham Children's Hospital NHS Trust provides a wide range of general and specialist health services to children and adolescents within the West Midlands and beyond. As Birmingham's lead provider of health services for children, the hospital NHS Trust enjoys a national and international reputation in specialist areas including liver transplantation, cardiac surgery and neonatal surgery. Providing one of only two centres in the UK, the liver unit is the designated centre for small bowel transplantation, whilst the heart unit leads the field in congenital heart disease. The Trust also manages city-wide Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS).


Birmingham Children's Hospital Entrance

With a budget of over £100m the Trust boasts over 50 specialties and departments ranging from a modernised A&E unit seeing 38,000 new patients per year, to diabetic home care, respiratory medicine and oncology, approximately 2300 staff and over 140,000 children using its services every year.

The state-of-the-art radiology department houses CT and MRI scanners whilst a 20-bed Intensive Treatment Unit is the single largest paediatric resource in the UK, alongside the country's largest oncology unit for children.

Pioneering developments include the first ever successful paediatric triple transplant, the world's smallest successful pacemaker in a three day old baby and a neuro-navigation system which provides image-guided surgery for children with brain tumours and other neurosurgical conditions. In December 2001 a team of skilled neurosurgeons, general and plastic surgoens successfully separated conjoined twins (joined at the base of the back) in the first operation of its kind in the UK.
Recent developments include the designation of the Eye Department as a national centre for treatment of cancer of the eye (Retinoblastoma) and funding for the Dermatology service to provide a national service (jointly with Great Ormond Street) for the care of patients with Epidermylosis Bullosa (EB). A dedicated unit to care for patients with sickle cell anaemia and thalassaemia will open in 2003, whilst the first Acute Admissions Unit outside London, for children and adolescents with mental health conditions will open at Parkview Clinic.