Jane Fide, Centre Head at Maggie’s Cheltenham, writes about the preparation involved in opening a new Maggie’s Centre.
Maggie’s Cheltenham opens to the public today, 20 October 2010, and to mark the day Centre Head Jane Fide has written about the hard work that has gone on in the last few months in preparing the centre for public use.
After 12 months of construction, our new Maggie’s Centre in Cheltenham is ready to be opened. This magnificent building designed by Sir Richard MacCormac has caused quite a stir amongst the residents of Cheltenham. It has taken years of planning to get this far and tomorrow is our official open day.
The last few weeks have been busy, exciting and at times frustrating. Our small team moved into the building at the end of September and we worked alongside the builders and carpenters for the following two weeks. At times it was chaotic, with visitors randomly walking into the centre asking for tours around the building and sometimes asking for help and advice, and then large boxes being delivered.
We’ve had a large number of visitors at the centre for a variety of events including two open evenings to talk about our programme of support, one for the local community and another for all the health care professionals. This saw the centre hosting an incredible 130 visitors. Our nutritionist Caroline attended, with an amazing spread of healthy nibbles and all the visitors were very impressed with the building and the food.
A vital element of centre life is the volunteers who assist with meeting and greeting and administration tasks. I’ve helped train them and familiarise them with their roles and responsibilities and have been so impressed by the number of individuals looking to help us out!
As you may expect, we’ve also been busy with deliveries of furniture and we’ve had to spend some of our time unpacking furniture and assembling chairs. This is in addition to arranging cleaning for the centre, refuse collections, security and food delivery.
A significant part of my role as a Centre Head at a new centre is liaising with staff at Cheltenham General Hospital’s Oncology Unit, to let them know Maggie’s Cheltenham is there to support their patients – our recent visits have seen us placing laminated posters to encourage people affected by cancer to visit the centre.
Our staff are now onboard and our roles have been divided up - we have a nutritionist, tai-chi teacher, creative writing specialist and art therapist. Norman Hindmarch, our Psychologist, will be running rest, relaxation and visualisation sessions. As Centre Head, I will be facilitating the Talking Heads sessions, alongside the drop-in sessions that people affected by cancer are free to attend without appointment.
It’s wonderful that after years of fantastic fundraising efforts from the local community and nationally, we are going to be able to provide the people of the three counties with vital cancer support.