Publish date: 13 December 2021
Staff overcame the limitations of social distancing, masks and cold weather in an outdoor garden area at newly renamed Leigh Moss Hospital to celebrate its official opening by Chairman Beatrice Fraenkel last week.
Catholic Chaplain Rose Taker led a small group in ‘Hark the Herald Angels Sing’ and other carols accompanied on guitar by recovery learning facilitator Chris Kirby from The Life Rooms. She paid tribute to the dedication of Mersey Care staff for “never giving up” during challenging times and spoke of the hope she had witnessed at many of our places providing care, which is particularly poignant at this time of year.
Due to Covid-safety precautions a ribbon cutting ceremony took place outdoors in their newly completed dementia-friendly patients’ garden area. The specialist dementia care and older people’s mental health service in Thomas Lane, Knotty Ash, Liverpool, has been extensively refurbished by the Local Division in collaboration with the Estates team. The inpatient area has been named Fern Ward.
The site of the former Thomas Leigh building, previously a care home, has been completely remodelled to include a 16-bed inpatient ward on the ground floor, providing single en suite bedrooms and a dementia-friendly environment.
Leigh Moss Hospital is a multi-disciplinary approach to support service users needing complex care, and their carers, and is co-located with the older adults’ complex care community mental health team (CMHT) who moved onto the site earlier this year from Mossley Hill Hospital.
A dementia-friendly garden, completed in September, will enhance the experience of patients, carers and staff. It has all-weather surfaces and has been designed to prevent slips, trips and falls, plus a range of outdoor features and equipment, storage and seating areas for all year round use.
Chief Operating Officer Donna Robinson said: “This is another improved facility with beautiful outside space for our service users and staff – a big thanks to everyone who has been involved.”
Go to our website for more information about Leigh Moss Hospital
