England’s former Deputy Chief Medical Officer, Professor Sir Jonathan Van-Tam, opened the new St Barnabas Hospice Wellbeing Centre in his hometown on June 8th.
St Barnabas Hospice has formally opened its Wellbeing Centre in Boston. What used to be a fading bungalow unfit for purpose is now a beautiful sanctuary that offers space to relax, socialise, and attend appointments for St Barnabas patients and their families in the south of Lincolnshire.
The new centre has both treatment and therapy rooms as well as a garden room where exercise sessions and counselling can take place. Unlike St Barnabas’ Inpatient units in Lincoln and Grantham, this building has no beds but offers patients who have been diagnosed with life-limiting illnesses a place to access well-being support and helps patients to live well for longer.
The building is named Novak House after local philanthropist Stefan Novak. He left almost £500,000 to St Barnabas as a legacy gift in his will in 2019 after his wife was cared for by a hospice in London. The total build and renovation costs for the wellbeing centre totalled £1 million and wouldn’t have been possible without the generosity of almost 900 local people who gave to our Wellbeing Hub Appeal – Thank you.
Professor Sir Jonathan Van-Tam said: “It is really going to be an improvement for people of the Boston area, and I’m very proud to be associated with it. Thank you to all the benefactors, the big ones and the small ones. You’ve all made an enormous difference.
“I also hope that the centre goes from strength to strength and really becomes an important kind of beacon of hope in the community in the years that come.”
Chief Executive, Chris Wheway, said: “Novak house, to me, is a tremendous development for us as a hospice working in Boston. It’s about serving the people of Boston and providing high-quality end-of-life specialist palliative care.
“We provide all sorts of care, counselling, relaxation therapies, and physiotherapy and occupational health support, our hospice at home teams are based here and we also have consultant support from here and volunteer support, so there’s a tremendous amount of work that starts from this hub and then goes out into the community as well as people coming here.”
Head of Wellbeing Services, Mandy Irons, said: “Legacy donations are hugely important to us. We receive some funding for our care services, but it doesn’t cover all our costs. Without legacy funding and other donations, we simply would be unable to provide the services we do. We can’t thank the Novak family enough, you know, a profound thank you for what they have been able to create.”
The Hospice is hosting a public open day Wednesday 15th June from 10-2 pm. If you are from the Boston area and would like to access care from St Barnabas Hospice, you can contact them here.