About us

Alder Hey is a special place with phenomenal potential.

Alder Hey Children’s NHS Foundation Trust is a provider of specialist healthcare to over 330,000 children and young people each year. In addition to the hospital site at West Derby in north Liverpool, Alder Hey has a presence at a number of community outreach sites across Liverpool and Sefton. In collaboration with other providers, our staff help deliver care closer to children and young people’s homes by holding local clinics at locations from Cumbria to Shropshire, in Wales and the Isle of Man. During 22/23 the Trust also provided inpatient care for children with complex mental health needs at our Alder Park building in the nearby borough of Sefton; we moved these children into our brand new inpatient unit (Sunflower House) in May 2023.

The Trust employs a workforce of 4,236 staff who work across our community and hospital sites. As a teaching and training hospital, we provide education and training to around 930 medical, physician associates and dental students and over 950 nursing and allied health professional students each year.

The Trust serves a wide population for secondary care across Liverpool, Sefton and Knowsley, and has grown into a one-stop shop for the great majority of children and young people’s services over the past decade. Alder Hey is one of just two tertiary providers serving the whole of the Northwest, with world-leading services in many specialties, including cardiac surgery, congenital heart disease, neurosurgery, craniofacial surgery, and many more.

The Trust is an anchor institution for children and young people’s healthcare, prioritising widening access to quality work, working with our local communities, embedding prevention into pathways, addressing health inequalities, and protecting the planet for generations of the
future.

Alder Hey is a top performing Trust with a CQC ‘Outstanding’ for Care, and ‘Good’ overall. Read our latest report here.

We nurture a richly talented cohort of committed researchers and host a dedicated National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Clinical Research Facility enabling the delivery of early stage, experimental clinical research in a state-of-the-art dedicated facility within the hospital.

We are a leading innovator, with a one-of-a-kind Innovation Hub, which brings together children, young people, and families, with clinicians, and with enterprise to develop breakthrough solutions to health and care related problems.

Our mission, vision and values

We want a healthier, happier, and fairer future where every child and young person can achieve their full potential.

Alder Hey has come a long way.

10 years ago, we weren’t considered world-leading. Today, we’re named as one of the top children’s healthcare providers in the world.

But just as Alder Hey has changed, the needs of Children and Young People are changing too.

In our local area, the number of children and young people is growing, with more living in poverty and suffering poor health because of it.

We’re seeing huge growth in demand, and this is putting great pressure on us – and not just at Alder Hey, but everywhere children and young people get care and support.

We’re only going to be able to make a real difference if we seriously tackle the issue of health inequalities. 

Because we want “A healthier, happier, and fairer future where every child and young person can achieve their full potential.”

We can only deliver this if we work with partners, in a healthcare system that has children and young people’s needs at its centre.

To achieve our Vision, we have set ourselves some ambitious goals
  • We want to offer an unrivalled experience, guided by children, young people, and families
  • We want to support our people to have rewarding careers and be healthy and happy
  • We want to deliver pioneering breakthroughs, a world leader in research, innovation, and education
  • We’ll collaborate for children and young people, bringing together a joined-up health and care system
  • We’ll work smarter with partners to grow how much we can do and how well we can do it
  • We’ll challenge ourselves with some tough targets to make sure we stay focused

We must lead the way and deliver a future where all children and young people are able to get the best quality healthcare regardless of who they are, where they live or their background, and deliver “a healthier, happier, and fairer future where every child and young person can achieve their full potential.”

Our groundbreaking work

Alder Hey cares for 330,000 children, young people and their families a year, that's one child every minute

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86% of staff would recommend Alder Hey as a place for friends and family to receive care

Alder Hey is ranked in the Top Ten of Newsweek’s World’s Best Specialised Hospitals 2022 (Paediatrics)

Since 2013, over £65m has been raised for charity, making a real difference to families everyday