Thank you to the Eric Wright Charitable Trust for funding The Dreamers’ Programme here at Alder Hey. This innovative Arts for Health project is currently supporting children accessing our Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS), offering patients access to bespoke one-to-one creative activities to complement their clinical treatment journeys.

This innovative ‘social prescribing’ approach has been used extensively in adult healthcare, but Alder Hey is currently one of the only children’s hospitals in the country using it to support the mental wellbeing of our children and young people.

Vicky Charnock our Arts for Health Manager told us:

“We are extremely grateful to the Eric Wright Charitable Trust for funding this amazing project here at our hospital. During our first year of delivery we were able to work with 40 children and young people and achieved some amazing breakthroughs. Not only did we support our participants to improve their wellbeing, but also to gain the confidence to engage with wider creative activities in their local communities.

“This is a truly youth-led project and in response to the wishes of our young participants, we are constantly expanding the range of creative activities on offer. During year two we will be including DJing, special effects make-up for film and television, rap and grime music, and gaming design. The only limits are the imaginations of our patients!

“Even the name for our project came from our children and young people who felt that The Dreamers’ programme reflected the ambition of this project to inspire new creative journeys for our participants, and most importantly for everybody to ‘dream big’”.