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Who we are

We provide mental health inpatient services for adults in Knowsley. Our male inpatient ward is called Coniston Unit and our female inpatient ward is called Grasmere Unit.

Our inpatient wards provide a safe and comfortable environment to promote recovery and mental wellbeing, and meet your needs as an individual. Every service user will have their own private bedroom, as well as access to communal living areas and activity rooms on the wards.

Our inpatient mental health services are for adults with severe mental health problems like schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and severe depression. 

Wherever possible, we aim to support our service users in the community and only a small number the service users we see will need to be treated by our inpatient services. 

If your mental health needs do become more complex, it may be felt that a stay on one of our wards would be the best way to meet your current level of needs. 

We work closely with our community mental health services such as our assessment teams, home treatment teams and recovery teams to ensure a smooth transition to community services when you are discharged from one of our wards and make sure you have the right support in place to enable you to stay well in the community.

We also work with other local services such as social services, housing services, substance misuse services and your GP. 

As our mental health wards are specialist services, you can't self-refer to them. 

If you are experiencing symptoms of mental illness, please make an appointment to see your GP who will be able to talk to you about your symptoms and how they are affecting you. They will then be able to advise on which local services they think will be able to help and make a referral for you.

If you are already open to one of our community mental health services, contact your care coordinator or alternatively, you can contact your local mental health assessment team directly.

If you are experiencing mental health crisis and need urgent help, please visit the 'help in a crisis' page on our website.

We also provide inpatient mental health services in Halton, St Helens and Warrington.

Parking

There is paid for car parking at Whiston Hospital. For details of charges please visit the St Helens and Knowsley Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust website.

Visiting times

Visiting times for Coniston and Grasmere Units are:

  • Monday to Friday, 6.30pm - 8.30pm
  • Saturday and Sunday, 2.30pm - 4.30pm and 6.30pm - 8.30pm

If you are experiencing difficulty visiting during these hours please speak to the nurse in charge.  

Smokefree

As with the rest of our buildings, Whiston Hospital is smokefree. This means that smoking is not permitted anywhere inside the building or in the hospital grounds. Service users will be supported to abstain from smoking while on our wards and will be given nicotine replacement therapy as part of their care plan to support them to manage their addiction. For more information on this, please visit our smokefree page.

You can view a 360 degree virtual tour of Coniston Unit and Grasmere Unit at Knowsley Resource and Recovery Centre on the 'Our Locations' section of our website.