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Charity in search of another chance
IN December 1986, 20-year-old trainee house auctioneer and valuer Philip Helliwell and his 19-year-old brother John were both gravely injured when the car they were travelling in to a football match was involved in a head-on collision.
The friend who was driving died, John lost both kidneys, necessitating a transplant, and Philip suffered brain injuries when the two were thrown from the back seat through the windscreen. After more than a year in hospital, Philip was left in a wheelchair with multiple disabilities.
He can use his right hand a little, and after a while new friends get used to his speech. His short-term memory is poor, but in spite of everything, his father Ted says his son is "always happy." Philip needs 24-hour care, and he lives in a small specialist home near Rotherham.
Ted, who is a 72-year-old retired teacher, picks Philip up and takes him two days a week to the Second Chance Headway Centre in the grounds of Pinderfields Hospital, Wakefield. The centre, based in temporary buildings, is the only full-time day centre of its kind in Yorkshire, offering support, advice activities to improve the lives of people who have suffered all kinds of acquired brain injury.
Ted stays at Second Chance and helps with woodwork and craft sessions. Philip, now 42, has been learning to use the computer with his better hand, and enjoys the conversation of the other members. He has made many friends there since he started attending 15 years ago.
"He enjoys the happy atmosphere," says Ted. "If Second Chance wasn't there, we'd have to find something for him to do, because the alternative at the moment would be for him to sit in front of the TV at the home."
Back in 2002, office manager Brian Collinson from Ossett, near Wakefield suffered a brain haemorrhage which left him with memory loss, dizziness and sight problems. After hospital treatment, he couldn't go back to work and began turning his hand more and more to art work, sketching and painting distinctive designs on old vinyl records.
When I visit Second Chance, Brian, 57, is bent over his latest creation, a work-in-progress mosaic picture of the coast at Sandsend in North Yorkshire, made from fragments of ceramic.
"It gives my wife Linda a break. The greatest thing is that everyone accepts you. No-one questions anything you do, whether it's that your speech is a bit slow or someone having a fit. Seeing others here makes me realise how lucky I am compared to some. Quite a few can't walk
or talk."
Andy Watson, 45, was diagnosed with a brain tumour three years ago. If the growth had not been removed it would have kill him, but surgery also carried risks. After a month's rehabilitation at Pinderfields, Andy went home to his parents near Barnsley. It took him a year to walk again, and he now gets about with a stick. His speech impairment has gradually receded.
"This place has been a life-saver. My mum and dad have been brilliant, but you need to get out and see other faces and people here understand."
Andy and a few of the others have been in the kitchen, learning to cook spaghetti bolognese and summer fruit pavlova for lunch.
Second Chance also offers English and Maths lessons and all sorts of arts sessions, as well as life skills, physiotherapy, speech therapy and cognitive therapy. Currently, 47 people use the centre each week.
The main activity room doubles as dining room, with a pool table in the corner. A small meeting room doubles as the craft room. An IT room, a couple of tiny offices and loo take up the rest of the inadequate space. The 20-odd staff are mostly volunteer ex-therapists or nurses, who work at Second Chance out of love.
Second Chance began at Pinderfields 30 years ago, springing from the lack of ongoing support and advice for the brain injured and their families and carers following discharge from hospital. The move to a base for the charity Second Chance Headway (SCHC) in the grounds of the hospital happened 16 years ago .
The charity has been told by Pinderfields that, due to the completion of the new hospital and decomissioning of the old one next year, the SCHC will no longer be able to remain on its current site after the end of August 2010. The 1,000 sq ft occupied by the centre, for which it pays a peppercorn rent, is due to be landscaped.
The charity would like to offer help to more users but increased services cost more money and need both more staff and a bigger building with tailor-made facilities.
SCHC's service was initially supported by in-house fundraising alone, but recently funding for 70 per cent of its clients has come from various local authorities, predominantly Wakefield Council, which has said it is unable to increase funding to expand services or offer new ones.
Like other organisations dealing with head injures, SCHC is concerned at the lack of Government funding for research. It also argues that vulnerable people should not have to fight as they do to access such finances as exist to help them.
The immediate problem is that the charity is staring homelessness in the face at a moment that could hardly be worse. The trust that runs Pinderfields says it recognises the value of the work done by SCHC, but the availability of land "...is constrained by our contractual commitments to develop our new hospital...We will support Second Chance in its search for appropriate new facilities."
Pinderfields and SCHC looked at what accommodation might be available on the hospital site as a new base for the centre. Nothing suitable was found, but the charity looked at a property on Batley Road, and had plans drawn up to buy and refurbish it at a cost of 400,000-500,000. That scheme has been shelved due to the potentially unstable future of the centre's funding.
"I think that, of all illnesses, brain injury is the most horrendous," says Judith Evans, who is chief executive of development at Second Chance. "You might not always see outward signs of it, but a person can be left completely altered by what they've been through, and they may need a very high level of care. It can put huge strain on relationships with partners and the family."
Judith should know. Her husband, the former rugby league star Graham Evans, suffered a brain injury eight years ago. "Society is not always so caring or understanding of people who behave in a certain way because of brain injury, and it can be very strange and frightening for a person to face the world again afterwards. Despite the work we do, though, we are not classified as giving a health care service."
The charity had found a philanthropic bank that was willing to give SCHC a loan to cover the lion's share of the money for the new centre.
"The plans have been dropped because of the situation we
now find ourselves in," says Mrs Evans.
"We'd have had to continue to raise money through fundraising at a rate of about 31 per cent a year, which lately has been proving increasingly difficult. People are facing unemployment and financial instability, so giving to good causes is less of
a priority.
"Also, although we did have our loan approved, changes in how our users are funded under new arrangements in a Government White Paper have meant that we're no longer able to predict accurately what our annual income will be. Funding won't come from local authorities in a block directly to us, but will go to the individual user to spend on services as they choose.
"This looks more unpredictable to the bank, even though we know – and certainly hope – our members will still want to come."
Philip van Hille, consultant neurosurgeon and president of SCHC, says the charity's situation would not have come about if a higher priority was given by the Government to the needs of those with brain injury. "Everything to do with it is underfunded, including research and support for patients and carers. What we are left with is the hope that a benefactor might come forward."
www.schc.co.uk
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Saturday 11 February 2012
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