The Fountain Centre

July 26, 2021| Past Issues

A charity providing vital and much needed support for cancer patients and their carers. St Luke’s Cancer Centre, at the Royal Surrey NHS Foundation Trust

Can you believe it has been over one whole year since the world stood still? I don’t think any of us could have predicted the way things have gone. Yet, here we are, one year on and the Fountain Centre is still standing. Like many others, it has been a challenge for us to keep our services going. But we can say without doubt and fear of humility – we did it!

Main image: The Fountain Centre in its COVID layout. “We hope to revert back to our comfy sofas in the near future!”

For those who do not know us, the Fountain Centre is a small independent charity situated within St Luke’s Cancer Centre at the Royal Surrey NHS Foundation Trust in Guildford. This support is offered from diagnosis and beyond to cancer patients and their carers who live within Surrey, West Sussex, and Hampshire. Support is provided through the provision of a Complementary Therapy Service which includes acupuncture, massage, wig service, reflexology, reiki, emotional freedom technique, manual lymphatic drainage and Indian head massage among others. We also have an Emotional Support Service, a Children’s and Family Service and an information service.

The Fountain Centre’s therapy cabin in a quiet, outdoor garden setting at the Royal Surrey.

Our Children and Family Counselling Service is unique in England, we believe. This team works with those cancer patients who have school age children or younger – currently about 20% of all patients. All of this support is offered with the help of over 100 volunteers who each give us 3 hours of their time per week.

During lockdown we had to close all our face-to-face services. Although our doors had to close, support continued for those who needed it in whatever way we could offer it. Covid offered us a chance to reassess the way we work both for our patients and together. During that time we redeveloped our website, www.fountaincentre.org, to include many new video services and our emotional support team was able to maintain a full counselling and coaching service by phone, Zoom, Skype and Facetime.

“The Fountain Centre is an amazing place, filled with love, compassion and hope. You are all incredible people and help so many people who are dealing with cancer. I’m proud to be involved.”

We have developed a range of resources for patients with on-going physical and psychological side-effects following their treatment. Since April, we have been opening up gradually to welcome those patients coming in for out-patient oncology clinics and radio-therapy, providing any therapies that current social distancing requirements allow. We are responding flexibly and imaginatively to the constant changes of ‘the new normal’ including making necessary environmental changes within the Centre but hope to revert back to our comfy sofas in the near future! We are looking forward enormously to a time when all our volunteers can return to us and we can provide a full range of therapies again.

One of our therapy rooms.

We depend on the support of local companies and community groups, and generous individuals, to cover our annual costs of over £200k. As with many small charities, the pandemic has hit us hard and we have had to find new ways to raise money and support our patients and their families and we are proud that we have continued to do this. We know the service is so vital to so many. In the words of one of our volunteers “The Fountain Centre is an amazing place, filled with love, compassion and hope. You are all incredible people and help so many people who are dealing with cancer. I’m proud to be involved.”