Childhood Cancer Awareness Month - Three years at Waterfall House
This year’s Childhood Cancer Awareness Month (September) marks three years since the opening of Waterfall House - where we offer our continued support to children and young people with cancer. In doing so, we express the importance of innovative medical research to future patients and their families. We want to take a moment to shine a light and reflect on the progression of Waterfall House and its clinical teams at our Children’s Hospital, located in the centre of Birmingham.
In August 2018, the Children’s Hospital opened a £37.5m state-of-the-art Oncology and Haematology Centre named Waterfall House, set to create expansive opportunities to eradicate cancer for our kids through invaluable medical trials and compassionate quality care – supported massively by the donations made to our charity. Even though our beautiful paediatric cancer centre is only three-years old, our hospital’s cancer research and innovation works have been in place for over a thirty-year period.
This year alone Waterfall House have received over 19,600 inpatient and outpatient visits to our Haematology and Oncology Centre which has been massively benefited by the support of our various clinical teams. These teams extend beyond our Cancer Research Team, to include our cancer clinicians across Haematology, Oncology and Neuro-oncology to our non-cancer clinicians in Stem Cell Transplant (SCT) and Haematology.
Hannah Craig, Quality Lead Nurse said - “Waterfall House has become a valued space at the Children’s Hospital as we continue to see our hospital team members strive towards new ways of improving the quality of life, and understand how best to combat childhood cancer in young people. The Oncology and Haematology centre welcomes over 1,100 patients per month in need of support and clinical treatment.”
Our ambitious, brave and compassionate teams offer a whole host of support to our kids to ensure that comfort is maintained throughout their stay at the Children’s Hospital. The new building has allowed our expert team to continue to deliver world-class care to its patients, with world-class facilities to support this. The trust has contributed almost £8 million to create Waterfall House with a generous £4 million received through fundraising to facilitate ground-breaking research projects and advanced medical equipment.
Jane Cooper, Oncology Research Nurse at Waterfall House added: “We all take great pride in our roles and love the jobs we do; it’s a privilege working to help and support children with cancer and their families.”
From the therapy they give to the special moments that they share; our consultants are nationally and internationally recognised as leaders in the treatment and research of childhood cancer. Without our many teams of inspirational clinicians, this would not be possible. We’d like to say a big ‘thank you’ to all teams at Waterfall House for their commitment to supporting children and young people with cancer.