Centre details
- Address
32 Hampton Road, Twickenham, Middlesex, TW2 5QB - Telephone
020 8898 7753 - Manager
Claire Blackburn - Email
centre32@rbmind.org - Opening Times
Centre 32 Overview
Centre 32 has been running as an open access drop-in since 1976. It used to employ three staff, all whom have experience working with vulnerable adults. Centre 32 as the drop in service will be closing on the 22nd of February 2010, non withstanding the heritage and impact this service has had on the community.
Over the course of these 30 years there have been changes in the services we have provided, as we have adapted to successive changes in national and local policies for mental health services.
One important strand in our day services work for many years has been the running of this ‘drop in’ services. Apart from this service we also currently also run The Vineyard (in Richmond), the Social Centre (in Richmond) and Mind n’ Mortlake (in Mortlake) (for more information on these services please click here). We also have Lots a Plot, an allotment project, a People’s Network supporting a number of independent peer groups, and a Time Bank, enabling people with mental distress and others to exchange their skills and time to help one another, both individually and collectively (for more information on these services please click here).
This is a period of great change in the national and local vision of how mental health services should be shaped and coordinated to meet people’s needs. The aim of day services in the community is leaning more towards an emphasis on individual support in order for a person to achieve their own goals and aspirations. This is coupled also with the move beyond segregated buildings and the support for more peer led initiatives. For the last two years, influenced by this Recovery approach, RB Mind has been trying to increase user involvement in the running of our drop ins, increase the number of user volunteers and, more recently, encourage Time banking.
The timing of this decision to close down the service that operated within Centre 32 was also much influenced by our current financial problems. Many of our historical drop ins have always relied on our limited unrestricted income to keep going, and that, in these difficult times, does not now stretch to make them sustainable. We have had to make significant savings in staff time but doing so aiming to use staff time we can afford more constructively, this done supporting a peer group approach to socialising and activity drop in sessions based in community venues, and using staff time to also provide more individual support to help people achieve their own goals in life. Our financial situation remains difficult, however we still need to do more to restrict our spending and increase our unrestricted income in order to safeguard our future.
This change is a crucial one for the longer-term viability of RB Mind and to enable us to move towards the new vision for mental health services. We believe that moving beyond buildings to offer more tailored services within the wider community for individual clients, at the same time tapping into users’ experience and capability to provide a peer led programme of sessions for socialising and activities, will mean more people can benefit, whether from individual support or through the confidence and experience of responsibility they will gain in running their own sessions.
Centre 32 the building however will still be used for the charitable purposes of RB Mind and a number of Peer Led Activities will be taking place from this venue amongst a selection of other venues within the community. For more information about the changes at RB Mind please click on the news section of our website - for a direct link please click here. Also please find below a number of newsletters that have been produced by the staff of Centre 32. These were produced over this period and time of change in order to keep service users of this service updated on progress being made around the service.
Also if you are interested in other activities that are taking place during the day please click here for our calendar page where you can download the latest version of What's On.
Consultation on the future of Centre 32 the building. (Update: 14 June 2010)
Centre 32, 32 Hampton Road, Twickenham
At their meeting on Monday 7th June 2010, Trustees of Richmond Borough Mind (RB Mind) decided to postpone the local consultation they have committed to about the future of Centre 32, until the Autumn / Winter 2010.
The reason for this is that RB Mind has some large pieces of development work taking place within the charity at present and this work, along with the ongoing streamlining of the staff team and the current CEO taking maternity leave from August 2010, means that the organisation does not have the capacity to manage a thorough and meaningful consultation in the upcoming months.
In the meantime, Richmond Borough Mind, which owns the building, is using Centre 32 as a resource building for running some of the remaining transitional support groups available for ex clients of the drop-in service; as a venue for its new one to one services; as a place where one or two of the new Peer Led groups can start from and as a venue for therapeutic Coping with Life Courses.
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