A new home for Ben's Centre
When the pandemic hit, we quickly realised our premises on Church Street was just not suitable for the socially distance life we would be leading for the coming future. The service we could provide to clients from the premises in a safe manner was limited. With that in mind, a hunt for a bigger premises began; a premises where we could continue to provide for clients in undoubtedly challenging times and to grow as we moved out of the pandemic.
Our trustee’s found us a new home in 22 Wilkinson Street. This beautiful building allowed us to have up to ten clients come to us once again, and now with the lifting of social distancing restrictions, we are looking forward to welcoming more. Our new building sports a spacious new dining area where clients can enjoy delicious home-cooked meals, a lounge and IT room to relax and give clients access to computers and the internet, a dedicated assessment space to meet with clients privately, and a treatment room for visiting medical professionals and holistic therapists. We now have bathroom facilities for disabled guests, and work will begin soon on a wet room to provide washing facilities, kindly sponsored by the Clothworkers Foundation. Our space is brilliant and allows for us to grow to provide more activities and training to our clients. We now have a dedicated activities room and we’re working on a great programme of education, training and activities to run drop in sessions and longer courses. The space has also allowed staff to spread out into new offices and have space to run and partner with great charities and social enterprises that can offer their skills.
The training and education programme is in its infancy here at Ben’s and if you have a skill you could teach to our clients and can spare some time, we would love to hear from you. More information on our new Plant a Seed education programme will come in due course, however, we are excited to start offering physical movement sessions, history lessons and more to our clients. We would like to build a full schedule and are especially interested in hearing from people with skills they can share in creativity (arts, music etc.), I.T, gardening or life skills.
Read more about our move: