From summer 2017 Claire House will open a new site in Liverpool. The Claire House Liverpool Hub will start offering more desperately needed services to families of seriously and terminally ill children in Merseyside, such as counselling, holistic therapies and hospice to home support. It will also become the home of our Liverpool fundraisers.
The new site is just off Honey’s Green Lane in West Derby. It is perfectly located, close to Alder Hey, where many of the children and families who come to Claire House visit. The charity’s long-term ambition is to develop a new hospice on the site, however, we are in the early stages of the project and do not yet have funding or full planning permission to build a new hospice.
The charity, that already runs a hospice on the Wirral, is developing the site as it is struggling to meet the demand to care for the seriously and terminally ill children in the area who desperately need its help.
Claire House CEO David Pastor said: “For every seriously and terminally ill child in Liverpool that Claire House currently reaches, there’s another we can’t. And for the first time in our history, demand means we are occasionally being forced to cancel stays for families who have booked them in advance, to focus on emergency care. We want to change that.
“We’ve seen a 40% increase in the number of children and young people we look after in the past four years and over half of these children come from North of the Mersey so opening a new site in the city makes perfect sense.”
The Hospice applied for “change of use” to the monastery which was granted last year. Work on the Hub has been getting underway with volunteers and contractors clearing the ground and preparing the interiors. In March 2017 Claire House submitted an outline planning application which, subject to approval, will enable us to start the process of developing a detailed plan.
Pastor added: “Our new site means families in Liverpool who are currently accessing services on our Wirral site will eventually have shorter, cheaper and less difficult journeys. They’ll also hopefully be able to access our services more often and for longer, with parents living in Liverpool not having to travel up to an hour to attend a two-hour Parents and Tots class or have a counselling session.”
Once long-term plans for the site are confirmed the charity plans to hold an open day for supporters, local residents and businesses.
