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...providing accessible mental health services across the county
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About East Suffolk Mind
East Suffolk Mind work to improve the lives of people who suffer from mental ill health.
We provide a range of supported housing and support to people living in their own homes.
| What we offer | Welcome from our CEO | HIstory & Present | Document Downloads |
We also offer community mental health resource centres which operate three or four days a week and some evenings. These centres offer support and opportunities to their users for personal development in a social, caring and enabling environment where mental health needs and issues are understood.
Our centres also offer an Advice, Information and Support Service (AISS) which is an independent, confidential, one to one service, which offers time to talk.
Complementary Therapies are available and include Reflexology, Reiki healing, Head Massage and Aromatherapy treatments. These can help relieve many conditions, acute and chronic.
East Suffolk Mind believes in the value of counselling and psychotherapy and provide a brief counselling service in most GP surgeries in the east of the County. A limited low-cost counselling service is also available at our resource centres and can be accessed through our AISS service. We also offer a PC based Cognitive Behavioural Therapy programme to help alleviate anxiety and depression.
East Suffolk Mind continues to work toward reducing the stigma, fear and misunderstanding that can surround mental ill health. Under the banner of the Suffolk Mind Partnership we work in partnership with West Suffolk Mind to ensure our services are available across the county.
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Welcome from our CEO
Welcome to East Suffolk Mind, I am Jo Searle, Chief Executive, I am a relative new comer, having only joined the organisation in July 2006. My main responsibilities are to ensure that the organisation delivers on its contracts and obligations, acts in line with the aims set out in its governing documents, and that we operate within the relevant legal and procedural frameworks.
East Suffolk Mind has been through a great deal of change in the last 12 months in order to position itself to face the challenges of the changing financial and economic environment, and to ensure that the services that we provide are done so to the highest standards. One of the main achievements of the past 12 months has been to move forward with the partnership with West Suffolk Mind, as the Suffolk Mind Partnership - this provides us with new opportunities and momentum to continue to deliver and develop accessible services for the whole community.
I regard the need to be in contact with staff, service users, volunteers and other stakeholders as a core requirement of my post - the only way to get a real understanding of what is happening across the organisation. I welcome opportunities to visit services, and am always happy to be contacted directly be anyone with questions, concerns, complaints, and hopefully the occasional compliment!
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History & Present
At first
East Suffolk Mind came into being in 1973 when the Ipswich and District Mental Health Association and another local association based in the North of the Suffolk Coastal Area merged to found East Suffolk Mind.
The first services that the new East Suffolk Mind started up after the merger where a group home, which was a house bought from the organisations funds in Hervey Street, Ipswich, the Horizons Club held one evening a week in the Deaf Centre in Fonereaux Road and the Parkside Club which was held one day a week in the Quaker Meeting House also in Fonnereaux Road. All these services were run and supported by volunteers.
Over the next few years several new group homes were opened, leased from Ipswich Borough Council. These were at Shenstone Drive, Nansen Road, Nacton Road, Shackleton Road and Broadmere Road. Another group home was opened in Bolton Lane which East Suffolk Mind managed on behalf of a housing association which later became Sanctuary Housing Association. All these houses were supported by East Suffolk Mind volunteers.
As part of the move from institutional care to care in the community and more particularly after a bad storm when hailstones caused considerable damage to one of the psychiatric hospital, St Audry's at Melton, a decision was taken to close the hospital. Patients were moved to the other hospital, St Clement's and plans were developed for supported housing schemes in local communities to rehouse the people who no longer needed hospital care. As part of the move to community care and developing services in the community East Suffolk Health Authority supported East Suffolk Mind to expand and start developing supported housing and other services to meet the needs of people moving back into their local communities.
In the summer of 1989 the office moved to 13 Old Foundry Road which seemed luxurious, three whole rooms, after the cramped and shared space at Victoria road. A second Community Officer post was created, which was firstly filled by Peter Stammers who almost immediately transferred to run the new club in Felixstowe. He was replaced by Tina Graves in October 1989, she subsequently became the manager of the supported housing services when the General Manager post was created. Further management posts where created over the years to respond to the needs of the rapidly expanding organisation, that of Housing Services Manager, Day Services Manager, Oranisational Development Manger and General Manager, later to be re-designated as Chief Executive. Also organisation's needs for finance, human resources and general administration began to grow, to provide the necessary central support to the rapidly developing services and staff numbers. However as more staff began to work from the office, even this space became quite quickly too small so the house next door was also leased and a doorway through between the house created on the second floor. Finally we also rented a third house in the terrace for use for the developing ‘drop in' and meeting facilities. The next stage was to look for larger and more suitable premises which could accommodate all the head office requirements and be used as a ‘drop in/club'. This was when East Suffolk Mind moved to Foundation St, were we rented the building from a firm of architects who had moved into the single storey building at the rear. A few years later we also took over this building which became the Rosemary Lane Centre.
When East Suffolk Mind began there were 6 group homes supported by volunteers. We no longer run any of these as they were closed in response to the changing model of supported housing service. We also opened 2 shared houses owned by Stonham HA at Hervey Street (that we had sold to Stonham as it was in need of extensive repair and modernization) and Spring Road, again these closed in response to the changing model of supported housing.
Jan 1988 The Cornerhouse opened as a Residential Care home for 8 people, with 2 shared bedrooms. The first residents were a group of people who had been living on the Burrows Unit at St Audry's Hospital.
Nov 1989 Montrose House opened as a Residential Care Home for 8 people moving out of long stay care at St Audry's Hospital. There was considerable opposition in the local community to the development of both The Cornerhouse and Montrose House. Ian and the trustees of ESM were involved in public meetings and considerable public relations work to persuade community leaders and others to support the developments. Since both have opened and been part of their local communities we have enjoyed excellent relationships with both our neighbours and the local community.
June 1989 Larkhill Way a shared house for 3 people and 4 self-contained flats opened leased from SCDC.
August 1990, saw the Core of the Gippeswyk Project opening with 8 tenants. We are now on our third alteration/extension to this property to improve the accommodation for tenants and staff. The 8 cluster flats of this development gradually came on stream during the next year.
Over the next year the 8 Gippeswyk Cluster Flats slowly came on line as Ipswich Borough Council identified suitable empty flats and they were then upgraded and furnished to provide the final stage of support for this scheme. Since the flats were first set up the addresses have changed many times as we developed a system with IBC that allowed tenants to remain in their flat and become a general needs tenant of the Borough whilst ESM would be allocated a new flat on the Chantry estate for a new tenant.
November 1990 Spinney Close Project was set up in temporary accommodation, an empty ward, Whitwell House, in the grounds of St Audry's Hospital. There was a delay in the capital funding for the new building at Kelsale which delayed the purchase of the plot and the availability of funding for the small development of the general and special needs housing. The Staff team established a community home under the close watching eyes of staff from the hospital many of whom foretold that it would not work, but it did. 17months later the project moved to the shared house for 8 people at 9 Spinney Close. Since then we were successful in gaining capital funding from Orbit HA, the owners of Spinney Close to alter and extend the project so it now provides self-contained and smaller units of accommodation.
March 1993 Eastwood Terrace opened to a very tight timetable in order to move all the new tenants in before the 1993 Community Care Act came in.
Burrell Road opened in July 1994 with the builders doing the finishing touches, like completing laying the bricks in the car park and carpets in the flats about two minutes before the official opening event. Fiona Gilmour was at that time the Project Manager of this service, which at that time was known as the dispersed housing projects. Her role was later taken over by Sally Harrington, then Lynn Reid and most recently Simon Muir.
Pembroke Avenue was opened two years later in March 1995 to provide a move on scheme for tenants of Eastwood Terrace.
The Upper High Street was the most recent of East Suffolk Mind's supported housing projects to open in June 1997. Again managed by the dispersed housing projects manager the whole group of projects then decided to adopt the name of The Moorings. We also developed the Tenants Support Scheme with Ipswich Borough Council, which later developed into our first Community Support Service when Suffolk Social Care took over funding the service when Housing Benefit, which paid for the tenant's support, was withdrawn. We have since then expanded Community Support Services to cover most of East Suffolk with the advent of Supporting People Funding.
Day Services Developments
In parallel with the development of housing services came a rapid development of drop ins and clubs which later all came under the umbrella title of Day Services.
The Parkside and Horizons clubs continued to run for many years. The first of the new day activity developments was a club/drop in held in the Gainsbourough Centre in Felixstowe. The premises used was a church hall in Gainsborough Road All equipment and furniture had to be stored away and stacked away at the end of each session, (brown chairs in one pile and cream in another, not mixed!) Very quickly members expressed their desire and need to have their own premises where they could belong and start more enterprising activities, particularly as the club moved venue between church halls several times. The money was raised to buy The Caretakers House in 1993
Other similar activities had been started off in church halls in Leiston at The Friends Meeting House and in The Gannon Rooms in Saxmundham where the same pattern was followed with the purchase of an empty police house opposite the station in Saxmundham which became The Willows, finally opening in 1999
In 2005 East Suffolk Mind took over the running of services in Stowmarket from Mid Suffolk Mind.
The Future
East Suffolk Mind is looking forward to being able to provide strong and consistent services across Suffolk due to the partnership with West Suffolk Mind.
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East Suffolk Mind Documents
We offer a range of documents to download, including our Annual Report and Draft 2007-2010 Strategy. Click here to access the Download Library.
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