The Catkin Centre and Sunflower House project, won through a RIBA competition, brings together in two connected buildings, a range of specialist mental health facilities that were previously scattered across the hospital site and the city of Liverpool. Together the buildings stand as an innovative, joined-up approach to the treatment of mental health for children and young people. The Catkin Centre provides a new home for a number of outpatient services including ASD, ADHD, development paediatrics, CAMHS, Eating Disorders and Crisis Care. It has engagement space, quiet rooms, consulting rooms, family therapy rooms, an immersive room, an art/music therapy room, offices and meeting space. Sunflower House provides a ‘home-from-home’ for young people with complex and enduring mental health conditions, comprising a 12-bed inpatient mental health unit for children aged 5-13 with the most challenging mental health conditions. This is one of only six inpatient units for this age group in the country. Alder Hey is the first children’s hospital in Europe to be integrated within a new publicly accessible park (Springfield Park - also designed by Cullinan Studio with landscape architect Turkington Martin). Research demonstrates that we must re-forge our connection to nature to stimulate healing - particularly for the mind. The Catkin Centre and Sunflower House embraces this therapeutic principle with places for refuge and outlook, gathered around courtyard gardens to create an environment that is warm and welcoming, with strong connections to natural materials and systems.