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Chelsea and Westminster Hospital celebrates 25th birthday with special messages from famous faces

24 May 2018

Chelsea and Westminster Hospital is celebrating its 25th birthday throughout May and has held a very special reception for hospital staff and supporters to their charity, CW+.

Chelsea and Westminster Hospital is celebrating its 25th birthday throughout May and has held a very special reception for hospital staff and supporters to their charity, CW+.

Famous faces including Holly Willoughby, Joanna Lumley, Amanda Holden, Georgia Jones and Claudia Winkleman have all sent birthday messages to the hospital’s staff praising them for their hard work and excellent care. 

Television presenter Holly Willoughby thanked staff at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital’s A&E who looked after her son Chester. She said: “Happy 25th birthday! Thank you for all your incredible hard work—you are a wonderful place. My little boy Chester had to come to your A&E and you came to the rescue and patched up his head. It was a terrifying experience for me and something you guys were just so brilliant with—and I know you do it every day and think that’s just your job, but you really are heroes. Thank you and enjoy this, your 25th birthday!”

Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust’s CEO, Lesley Watts, said: “Our hospital has a wonderful history, and I am proud to celebrate our birthday with so many dedicated staff, and inspiring patients and supporters, who have all played a part in it. In our more recent history—in the last couple of months we were rated ‘Good’ by the CQC, and our staff ranked us as one of the top Trusts to work for. It’s important we look to the future, and there’s a lot more in store for us—for example, we’ll soon be starting work on a state-of-the-art expansion of our critical care units at Chelsea, which will mean even better care for some of our most unwell patients.”

Chelsea and Westminster Hospital was officially opened by Queen Elizabeth II on 13 May 1993, bringing together the services of Westminster Hospital, Westminster Children’s Hospital, St Stephen’s Hospital and St Mary Abbot’s Hospital, into a brand-new, purpose-built hospital. This new hospital was designed to make the best use of light and incorporate arts, which had rarely been done before and the large atrium space was created to remove the enclosed corridors of traditional hospitals.

Not only is the hospital celebrating its own birthday this year, but they will also be celebrating the 70th birthday of the NHS on 5 July. Next year, they will celebrate the 300-year anniversary of their predecessor—Westminster Hospital. To celebrate this remarkable history, CW+ is delighted to have received a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund. The funding will be used to preserve the rich archive of artefacts and photographs from the hospital, creating a permanent, public exhibition of the hospital's history opening in December 2018.

About our charity CW+

Over the past 25 years, this incorporation of arts has been at the heart of the hospital with an ever-expanding art and design programme, led by the hospital’s charity CW+. With a collection of over 1,800 artworks—many being site-specific commissions—the charity transforms the hospital environment for patients and visitors. CW+ also runs a variety of participatory art, music, dance and theatre workshops for patients and its grants programme brings the latest health innovation and technologies to the hospital.

CW+’s work was highlighted in the recent Care Quality Commission (CQC) inspection report which rated Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust as ‘Good’. It’s one of the first to achieve ‘Good’ across the board under the new CQC inspection framework.

Contributors
George Vasilopoulos