Changes need to be made to ALL Parking facilities at the ROYAL BELFAST HOSPITAL FOR SICK CHILDREN

The Royal Belfast Hospital for Sick Children is the only hospital in Northern Ireland dedicated specifically to the care of children. It has 107 beds, and provides general hospital care for children living in Belfast, as well as providing most of the paediatric regional specialities for children throughout Northern Ireland.

The RBHSC provides No 1 care for all children, including those with life limiting illness diseases and conditions, along with a long list of other specialities.

So with that you would think with all the above criteria, that the hospital would have proper or enough car park facilities.... But they do not they don't have adequate disabled car park spaces or normal spaces in the children car park.

As a group for parents that have disabled children throughout NI, who's children attend the RBHSC, we would like to start a petition to see if we can get the conditions of car parking improved.

Many of our parents including myself have spent between 30 mins to 1hr30 mins waiting in queues to get into the car parks so that we can attend appointments for our children etc, and I can confirm that we are 8-10 times late for appointments due to the waiting time getting into the inadequate car park for the children's hospital, we have children with special needs both physical and mental, including children who are oxygen dependant children, so this is not acceptable to be waiting for long periods of time, with children in the car.......

I am speaking on behalf of myself (who has mobility problems) and many other parents, who also face the difficulty when we arrive to park in the disabled access at the side of the children's hospital, as we have to vacate our car and leave our children unattended to gain access to the car park via the intercom service, which is situated on the opposite side of the road, this is an unacceptable situation and needs to be changed to accommodate easier access.

The hospital recently opened a car park beside the children hospital which would have been ideal and made things a lot easier for our families, but it is now open as a staff car park, which is not even used to its capacity, so to drive past many free spaces to go and wait for hours in the other car park for a space, is so disheartening and wrong, it would have made more sense to free more spaces up for the children hospital which are needed so badly.

Recently we have been alerted to builders parking in 4 disabled spaces with their vans and skips, apparently they got permission for 1 vehicle from the hospital but surely this is unfair, surely no one should park in a disabled spot if there're not disabled . Period.

I was also promised in 2011 that a few disabled spaces where to be made available at the back of the disabled car park at the side of the hospital, which was successful, but during my correspondents with the RBHSC I was told that the front of the children hospital would also be changed, as lots of people would illegally park and leave their cars at the entrance, due to long waits at the children hospital, therefore making it impossible to even reach the disabled car park at times..... But this has not been addressed as yet, so this also has to be changed.

We would love your support by signing then sharing our petition so that changes will be made NOW.. It's unacceptable as a parent of a disabled child to have to put up with the lack of facilities in the RBHSC. So please help us to make a change. Thanking you in advance.