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My 4 year old daughter, cancer and parking

Posted By Stm

"My 4 year old daughter, cancer and parking"

About: Royal Belfast Hospital for Sick children

(as a parent/guardian),

As we are moving year by year to all specialist services being provided in Belfast for children, more and more parents from right across the North have to travel to Belfast with their kids.

These kids are among the most vulnerable people in society, cancer patients with no immune system who have to bubble from society.

Car parking and more importantly disabled care parking is non existing, after driving what could be 2 hours these are your options:

1. attempt to park in disabled spot, chances 1 out of 10.

2. attempt to enter children's car park, could wait anywhere to 2 hours

3. attempt to enter main car park, could wait 2 hours.

4. attempt to enter staff car park and risk fine.

5. Park on double yellow lines with blue badge like you would do anywhere else, you will get a ticket regardless of blue badge status.

6. attempt to find a parking space away from the hospital in the residential areas and hope you car is not stolen or damaged.

7. attempt to find a parking space in close by retail centres and hope you don't get fined if not back in time.

8. if you do find a disabled parking space you have to navigate both by car and then on foot past steel cages that a private car parking company have taken or stolen from the Belfast trust and placed half on the road and half on the footpath.

This is not sustainable nor do I think is it legal that the most vulnerable,  disabled children in this country who have to bubble so cannot avail of public transport are treated this way.

There is enough stress on the child to be in weakened state medically, physically and emotionally to have to walk or be trailed from nearby shopping centres just to get into clinics to receive chemo or radiotherapy or other services.

There is enough stress on parents going through this without them having to think that the best option they have would be to almost camp overnight at the hospital with their child just to be able to get parked.

As I said these children are in a bubble, they are prone to infections and are usually neutropenic so public transport is a risk, even taxis, so parents must protect their child.

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Responses

Response from Susan Garland, PPI Support Services Manager, Logistics, BHSCT 16 months ago
Susan Garland
PPI Support Services Manager, Logistics,
BHSCT

Submitted on 26/02/2024 at 11:15
Published on Care Opinion at 11:15

Dear Stm,

My name is Susan Garland and I am a Logistics Support Services Manager within Belfast Trust (BHSCT).

First, I wish to thank you for taking the time to provide valuable feedback on your experiences with car parking Issues and acknowledge the difficulties you are experiencing when visiting the Royal Hospitals site.

I acknowledge that many user of Royal Hospital for sick children are Immune compromised and public Transport or Taxis is not an option for your and other vulnerable patients.

Currently Car Parking on the Royal site is challenging for our visitors and patients, and queues can be extensive due to an increased volume of traffic on site. One of the reasons for the increase is that, allocated car parking for staff reached capacity a number of years ago with many staff on a waiting list for car parking for up to 3 years. Consequently, staff often park in the public carparks and pay the daily tariff and this impacts on spaces, especially in the main visitor’s carpark.

The Belfast Trust encourages staff to commute to work by public transport, walking, cycling, by motorbike or to car share. Despite this, the demand for car parking by staff exceeds the limited amount of car parking available on each site – particularly on the RVH site. This can add to the anxiety that many patients and their families may already be experiencing and leads to understandable levels of frustration.

Car parking in the BHSCT has not been able to expand its footprint within the Royal site and has been researching other options for staff parking including a permit system.

To ensure that available staff parking provision is targeted towards those in greatest need, the Trust recently agreed to apply carpark access criteria for staff. This system has now gone live on the BCH site and will roll out to the Mater and RVH sites soon. This will result in more spaces being available for patients and their families.

The Trust also operate a free Park N Ride from Blacks Road to the RVH for staff to try to alleviate some of the pressures of car parking on this site. The Trust is also preparing for the Hospital Charges Bill coming into effect in May 2024. This Bill will result in tighter controls around access to visitor carparks and will alleviate the current car parking queues.

I hope the above explains some of the measures being taken to improve parking for patients and their families. Please feel free to contact me if you have any further issues relating to car parking and my apologies again for your recent experience.

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