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 The Friends of Fulbourn Hospital and the Community was established in 1952, and is a Registered Charity. We are a group of people who support the care, welfare and recovery of sufferers from mental illness, whatever their age, who are or who have been associated with Fulbourn Hospital. We aim to increase the understanding of mental illness and the needs and problems of patients, and their carers, amongst people outside the Hospital. We are run by a Management Committee, with no paid staff. Administrative costs are therefore very low, and nearly all the money goes into patient care.
For more, see the Chair's report, 2006-2007 > [Illustration Above - Millennium Arts Project: The 'Preening Crane' sculpture, commissioned by the Friends, in the grounds of the Hospital. Preening is a sign of self-worth.]  We run two major projects:
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2/ The monthly Forum Lunch Club, is for older people with cultural and intellectual interests, living at home, who now have a mental health problem resulting in social and intellectual isolation. It has now been running, every month without a break, since 1994. Meetings take place on the last Wednesday of each month, throughout the year, in the study centre at St James Church, Wulfstan Way, Cambridge. Forum is run entirely by like-minded volunteers who make sure that members are welcomed individually on arrival and looked after. A home-cooked lunch is followed by a seminar-style talk, discussion or music. The approach the Forum Lunch Club takes for older people's day-care is probably unique, and it succeeds in engaging people who may be unwilling to participate in statutory provision. In 2004 the London charity Mental Health Media sent a film crew to a Forum meeting. The film, together with interviews, was included as an example of good practice in an educational video they commissioned on older people and mental health.  In 2007, county Primary Care Trusts were amalgamated to form the Cambridgeshire Primary Care Trust (now called NHS Cambridgeshire). The new trust's serious financial position led to big cuts in funding for the Mental Health Trust, necessitating major, and often controversial changes in the way mental health services are now provided. We have played an active part in monitoring these developments and changes in local mental health services. We are also members of the newly re-established Mental Health Stakeholders Group, which enables representatives of local voluntary mental health groups to meet senior members of the Mental Health Trust on a quarterly basis, in order to raise and discuss issues.
For more about this, see the Chair's report, 2005-2006 >
[Illustration Below - Friends AGM 2006 reflecting on the funding crisis in mental health provision
[Illustration Above - Millennium Arts Project Ceramics by patients] The Friends' Management Committee felt that, due to the success of the Millenium Arts Project, it should be expanded and developed across the whole of the Mental Health Trust's catchment area. This led to the establishment of 'Arts and Minds' (The Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Foundation for the Arts and Mental Health). A charitable, fund-raising body, it is now up and running under the energetic chairmanship of Richard Taylor, a former CEO of the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Mental Health Partnership Trust. Distinguished Patrons are Lord Colin Renfrew; the theatre director Simon McBurney; Dr Michael Thorne, Vice-Chancellor of Anglia Ruskin University and the internationally acclaimed singer Jill Gomez.
[Illustration Right - Sculpture in the grounds of the Hospital, by a local architect with Alzheimer's disease] |
1/ The
