THE NEW trust which brought together Birmingham Women’s and Children’s Hospitals, along with the mental health division has celebrated its fifth anniversary.
When the amalgamation happened – on February 1, 2017 – it was the first of its kind in the UK, joining care for women, children and families from Birmingham and across the country as specialist centres.
Although still a young organisation BWC has already achieved a great deal, including a first in carrying out a five-organ transplant for seven-year-old Jay Crouch, rolling out the UK’s first single maternity record across Birmingham and Solihull, and launching a Peer Support Worker programme where young people with lived experiences of mental health are trained to offer support to peers from similar backgrounds.
It’s also saw the opening of Magnolia House, a dedicated support centre for bereaved families at the Children’s Hospital and Waterfall House, home to the UK’s first pioneering Rare Diseases Centre for children, along with a combined inpatient and outpatient Oncology and Haematology Centre.
Sarah-Jayne Marsh, the Trust’s Chief Executive, shared a personal message to colleagues to mark the day.
She said: “Our fifth birthday is clearly an important milestone, but for me, it feels like we have always been one trust.
“Indeed I can hardly remember the days when we weren’t ‘BWC’, which is testament to everything we have achieved as a team since February 2017.
“We have launched new services, demolished old buildings, opened new facilities and celebrated a number of ‘firsts’, but what I am most proud of, particularly over the last two years, is the strength of the BWC spirit and our personal and professional resilience during the Covid-19 pandemic when we have all gone to the ends of the earth for each other, and of course the women, children, young people and families we serve.”
She thanked everyone who had been part of the journey.
“It hasn’t always been easy but we have come through it together, a unique and special organisation in every way.”
As part of its birthday celebrations BWC has made a small but important change to its well-known imagery working with mental health colleagues and members of Think4Brum and YPAG, its two young patient experience groups, on ways to expand the existing Trust imagery to include mental health services.
The result is the addition of a new fourth tree representing the mental health division.
Alex Borg, Executive Director of Mental Health, said: “The Trust’s birthday is an ideal time to do this and reflect how our services have grown over the last five years and the important place it has in the life of BWC and in the communities that we serve.
“This will make it easier for patients to identify our services and the link between them, BWC and Forward Thinking Birmingham (FTB), the community mental health partnership which we lead.
“It will also help to give a clear identity for our mental health colleagues and their work across the Trust and in the communities they provide care and support.”
