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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, 2008-2009 > [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.  We play an active part in monitoring 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. The Millennium Arts Project (MAP) has been running non-stop for nearly ten years. In 2003 the Friends set up arts workshops, specifically tailored to the needs of young-onset dementia patients. The range of work includes pottery, textiles, landscape design and gardening on the Hospital site. Described as 'highlighting a new approach for those with young-onset dementia', in 2004 it won a Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Mental Health Partnership Trust 'Good Practice Recognition' Award. In September 2009 Christina Rowland-Jones, until October 2009 chair of the Friends and founder/co-ordinator of the Millenium Arts Project, received an award from the Royal Society for Public Health, for her contribution to the arts and mental health. The Friends' Management Committee decided that, due to the success of the Millenium Arts Project, it should be expanded and developed across Cambridgeshire and Peterborough. This would mean that participation in arts activities could be made available to anybody with a mental health condition or learning difficulty, whatever their age and illness, across the whole of the Mental Health Trust. It led, in 2004, to the establishment of a new charity, 'Arts and Minds' (Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Foundation for the Arts and Mental Health). Distinguished patrons include Lord Colin Renfrew; Emeritus Professor German Berrios; the distinguished theatre director and actor Simon McBurney; Dr Michael Thorne, Vice-Chancellor Anglia Ruskin University; and distinguished singer Jill Gomez, as patron of the Michaelhouse Chorale. Arts and Minds has already run many exciting and innovative arts projects (see artsandminds.org.uk) under the energetic chairmanship of Richard Taylor, a former CEO of the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Mental Health Partnership Trust, and in March 2009 Gavin Clayton was appointed as part-time executive director. From April 1st 2010, as always envisaged, the artists and the projects run by the Friends' Millenium Arts Project will merge with Arts and Minds. |
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