New Hospice Update

If you drive or walk up St Mary’s Road in Kettering you will see that TreshamCollege has been almost completely demolished. A building that has educated 1000’s of young people, and quite a few not so young as well, is shattered. A ruin for a short while until it is flattened completely. Since it has been empty the building has become an ugly eyesore, a blot on the landscape but we must not forget the immense good that it has done.

It will be replaced, in part at least, with sheltered housing for the retired. Note, I did not say elderly, although I suspect its population, if they stay, will grow older and older. And that is a good thing too, we need more sheltered housing in all our towns.

But as I walk past I feel more that a note of regret. My dream of the TreshamCollege site becoming the home of a new enlarged Cransley Hospice is shattered. A hospice that would have had room to grow, perhaps even to accommodate a children’s hospice one day; a hospice that would have had the room to serve the whole community and with the facilities to support many more people to be cared for at home.

So what now? Firstly, I must say that I speak as a private individual, albeit patron of the hospice charitable fund. The NHS must make 20 billion pounds worth of savings in the next five years. Savings mean cuts and that means it is highly unlikely that there will be new NHS funds to develop palliative care services in the next few years. The only way to improve services will be to raise more money, much more money from charitable sources. Our neighbouring counties of Leicestershire and Warwickshire grasped this a long time ago and both raise many millions every year to provide the hospice care that they feel their populations need. That is, of course, care in the hospice, in hospitals and in the community. It will be, I think, the only way forward for us too.

These thoughts do not fill me with despair nor, for that matter, does the loss of the TreshamCollege site. There will always be opportunities we simply have to see them and seize them. But if we are to do that we need to be ready so that we can mobilise the support within our communities. I think and hope that the people of Northamptonshire, that’s you and me, are prepared to raise the millions necessary to provide a palliative care service and a hospice that we all want. Dreams are shattered but not for long.