Children’s Day Treatment Centre at Evelina London completes, providing dedicated day surgery facilities for families

The six-storey Children’s Day Treatment Centre at Evelina London Children’s Hospital has completed, helping the hospital to treat up to an additional 2,300 children per year. The centre’s Children’s Day Surgery Unit housed on the ground and 1st floors provides state-of-the-art day surgery facilities for children, and is designed to enhance the patient experience for young people and their families.

The new centre, next to the Evelina London Children’s Hospital building on Lambeth Palace Road, increases the number of children the hospital can treat each year. Children’s waiting times on the day of their procedure will be reduced thanks to the seamless same-day patient journey – with everything from pre-surgery checks to post-op recovery collocated in one purpose-built space.

The new building on the St Thomas’ Hospital campus provides two new operating theatres and specialist clinic facilities, including the latest child-focused technology and equipment. It also houses an admissions area, first stage recovery, second stage recovery and discharge facilities, along with clinical support spaces.

In terms of artwork, an outer-space theme was chosen with staff and patients to continue the narrative of the natural world theme of Evelina London. Consulting with children through Art in Site, Japanese manga artist Kiriko Kubo – who has previously designed award-winning artwork for Evelina London – reimagined original designs by children to create 82 space themed pieces, featured throughout the building.

The building is rated as BREEAM Excellent and is fully accessible, with level thresholds at all external entrance doors, accessible WCs on all floors, door widths which allow for wheelchair users, and visual and colour contrasts designed for those with sensory impairments. The overall building is designed to be easily adaptable and fully versatile to respond to future NHS need, which is set to change and evolve over the coming decades.

Hannah Brewster, Regional Healthcare Director, comments: “A key part of the brief was for the building to be separate from the main Evelina London’s Children’s Hospital – to both improve the overall experience of patients and protect the use of the unit as a day care centre. Our design ensures the building has its own identity with its own front door, appearing standalone but with the added support and reassurance of being physically connected to the main hospital. It is visually coherent through the sensitive use of the terracotta façade and integration of the interior design and artwork to feel very much part of the Evelina family.”

James O’Brien, Director of Operations and Improvement at Evelina London and Project Sponsor, comments: “Opening the Children’s Day Treatment Centre is a significant milestone for us in continuing to provide outstanding healthcare for even more children and young people, meeting their needs now and in the future. The look on the children’s faces when they enter the building makes it clear how special the facility is and how different from what many people would expect when entering a ‘hospital’.”