Liverpool Women's means so much to us all. Change will be hard.

ECHO political editor Liam Thorp reflects on why Crown Street hospital holds such a special place in this city with a major shake-up now planned

Liverpool Women's means so much to us all. Change will be hard.

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Just over a year ago I pieced together one of the most emotionally difficult articles I have ever written for the Liverpool ECHO. It was around a month after my first child was born and I was still coming to terms with what had been his traumatic and terrifying entrance to the world. Happily I was also exhausted and overwhelmed with love from his first few weeks of life a this stage.

I won't recount the entire experience, you can read the piece here, but what I will repeat is the enduring love and gratitude that I have for the staff at Liverpool Women's Hospital who not only saved my baby son's life, but tenderly and fastidiously guided myself and my wife through an incredibly difficult moment and beyond.

I am just one of an enormous amount of people in this city and this region who owe so much to Liverpool Women's Hospital. We recently celebrated my son's first birthday and I could not help but think of the doctors, midwives, nurses and other staff who combined such skill and dedication with such kindness when we needed it most.

I'll never forget what they did for us. I will never forget the smiles, the cups of tea, the encouraging words as we navigated those difficult first moments. Every time I walk or drive past the hospital building I am filled with a complex but ultimately positive gamut of emotions. It is, in short, a very special place indeed.

Liverpool is rightly very proud and protective of its dedicated maternity hospital. It is a rare thing. Liverpool Women's is the largest single-site maternity hospital in the UK. It is a special place full of important memories for so many people who live here.

So it is understandable that any plans to change that will be met with concern and opposition. This week, the National Health Service laid out its case for change, which could ultimately see maternity and gynaecology services moved away from the much-loved Crown Street hospital.

This is not a new idea, although health bosses insist it is a new process. In fact the Women's has been the subject of multiple proposals for closure and relocation in the relatively short time since it was opened in Toxteth in 1995. The strength of feeling that the city has for the Women's is best evidenced by the fact that all of these proposals have been met with campaigns, rallies and protests - and none of them have come to fruition.

But this time feels different. Health bosses in the region are clear that the current arrangement is one that puts patients in danger and that the safest option moving forward will be to co-locate Liverpool's maternity and gynaecology services on the site of one of the city's larger, acute hospitals - such as the Royal Liverpool Hospital.

The argument being made is that increasingly patients at Liverpool Women's are in need of specialist treatment from staff who are not based at Crown Street and that those who develop serious complications with their health are being put at risk by virtue of the fact that they must be transferred to a different hospital where such specialists are based.

The NHS are keen to point out that we are at a very early stage in any discussions about such major changes to our city's services, but I would say the direction of travel is clear. When I asked Dr Lynn Greenhagh, the Women's Hospital's chief medical officer this week if she believes the way to go is to co-locate maternity services at a larger hospital site, she was unequivocal, telling me "yes, absolutely."

While it is clear those proposing these changes have patient safety in their minds, they will also be acutely aware of the challenge that lies ahead in terms of winning the hearts and minds of a population that feels so much about that special place in Crown Street. They will make fair arguments that the brilliant people who work within it would still form the backbone of any reorganised service - but the place itself is symbolic for so many, myself included.

That strength of feeling will undoubtedly be on display when the NHS Cheshire and Merseyside's board meets to approve the case for change on Wednesday. Health bosses will be left in no doubt after that of the scale of the challenge that faces them as they seek to change the face of one of Liverpool's most cherished institutions.

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