Match Day Collections in Support of ‘Sowenna’

Match Day Collections in Support of ‘Sowenna’

Two match day collections held by the Cornish Pirates in support of The Sowenna Appeal have raised the excellent sum of £1095-46.
£488-88 was raised when the Cornish Pirates played their first Greene King IPA Championship home game of the season against Doncaster Knights back in September and a further £607-46 was the amount collected when the team recently played its final home league match against Yorkshire Carnegie.

Stephanie Pomeroy, Fundraising Manager for The Sowenna Appeal commented:

Our sincere thanks are once again expressed to the Cornish Pirates and their generous supporters. Also, we are delighted to say, the Pirates won both matches!

About Sowenna

The Sowenna Appeal is seeking funding for £1.2 million to transform Sowenna into the UK’s best adolescent mental health unit for young people in Cornwall & the Isles of Scilly. An Appeal Board was formed in November 2018, with an to raise £400,000 for the equipment in the Skiber (multi-purpose gym, dance, outdoor lesson space, cinema and theatre) and therapy suite as a priority. The remaining of the fundraising appeal will support the infrastructure costs for the additional areas and the maintenance of the equipment once the unit has opened.

Building a brighter future for young people in Cornwall

It is estimated that 1 in 10 young people aged between 5 and 16 have a mental disorder. Most can be treated within the community, but some require a more intensive programme of treatment and care.

Currently some of our most ill and vulnerable young people are travelling hundreds of miles away from their family and friends to hospitals in Birmingham, Essex, Kent and Cheshire to access psychiatric treatment.

We are delighted that we will soon be in a position to support these young people much closer to home through ‘Sowenna’ – Cornwall’s first adolescent mental health unit which is currently being built on the Bodmin Hospital site.

To ensure Cornwall has a leading-edge facility, the Sowenna Appeal has been launched to fund some of the items which will really make a difference to young peoples’ recovery, health and wellbeing. These include a sports barn, gym, plus fitness and sports equipment, parental accommodation to allow families to stay over and make admission less unsettling, a café area to allow visits with family and friends to happen in a friendly space, therapeutic gardens and equipment for music, arts and cooking.

Sowenna: The Building

A new 24-hour assessment and treatment mental health unit for children and adolescent patients. The service will deliver day care and educational services to both day service users and inpatients. The unit will provide a total of 14 beds in on suite single room accommodation (two of which are for high dependency care) within bed clusters and associated inpatient accommodation, together with clinical space for inpatients and day service users to attend for therapy services and to meet their educational needs.

The principle of the layout is to create three separate smaller scale living clusters. There are two gender specific clusters comprising of six bedrooms each and designated living area with access to an external courtyard. The education block and the main entrance block complete the accommodation around the main central courtyard.

The built environment, both internal and external, can have a significant effect on the well-being of service users, staff and visitors alike. The design of mental health service buildings can greatly assist in the therapeutic care of the service users, giving a positive experience for those who live and, as importantly, work within them.

For more information please visit: https://sowenna.cornwallft.nhs.uk/