The former St Winefride’s Roman Catholic Church in Bootle has been turned into a state of the art health, social care and mental health training academy and Life Rooms - courtesy of Mersey Care & Hugh Baird College.
The partnership has been funded by a £3.9 million Local Growth Fund grant provided by the Liverpool City Region Combined Regional Authority through its Single Investment Fund.
The funds have been used to transform the main church into a training hub, which includes a mezzanine and café area - a base for levels 1-6 health, social care and mental health training in partnership with Mersey Care. A new Life Rooms has also been built on the footprint of the current presbytery, delivering courses that provide practical life skills and become a community hub.
Join us, and our guest speakers, for a networking afternoon to find out more about this brilliant new project for the city!
Ben Towell – Workforce wellbeing and staff support counselling service Manager for Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust
Ben’s expertise within the NHS includes organisational strategy, occupational health, staff support services, comprehensive policy, training programmes, preventative initiatives, cultural improvement intervention and much more. Programmes that Ben has lead on within the NHS Sector have been recognised both nationally and internationally. In 2013, Ben won the Liverpool Community Health Award for Collaboration to acknowledge his inclusive approach to achieving positive outcomes for staff and patients. Ben received the 2015 National Health Business Award for Best NHS Publicity Campaign and has been heavily featured in International Learning Programme commissioned by the by the European Centre for Disease Prevention (ECDP). More recently Ben has been asked to be part of the National Expert Reference Group for Resilience and Trauma as part of the National Mental Health Workforce Collaborative and spoke in Westminster about the work he has been spearheading within the NHS.
Beatrice Fraenkel – Chair of Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust. Trustee of The Design Council HON: FRIBA; FRSA
Beatrice Fraenkel has been Chairman of Mersey Care NHS Foundation since 2008. Mrs Fraenkel is a qualified industrial design engineer and ergonomist with an established career in regeneration across the region. She has used her expertise to chair the Trust’s Design Board, working with service users to influence the caring environment at award-winning Clock View Hospital and current new-build mental health hospitals in Southport and Maghull. She was awarded the prestigious Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) earlier this year.