Celebrations as new building phase begins at Hoylake Cottage

Nov 10 2010 by Jane Clare, Heswall News

STAFF, residents and fund-raisers have this week celebrated the start of the next stage of the development of Hoylake Cottage.

Builders have started work on a new kitchen and laundry .... it comes after a massive fundraising effort raised £500,000, with the biggest donation coming from Montse and Rafa Benitez.

But the challenge to raise the remaining money to complete the project continues.

Despite the obvious delight of the start on Phase 2, fund-raisers are still strongly aware of the remaining challenges ahead.

Emma Keenan, Communuity Fundraiser for the Hoylake Cottage Daycare Appeal remains undaunted by the task, despite purse-strings tightening.

She told the News: “We still have to go out and ask people to help us or this just isn’t going to happen.

“But I’m confident we will do it in five years. We have to raise £1.5m but it will probably be close to two.”

The funds still need to come in to create a new daycare centre.

Emma said: “We deliver a service that is needed. Especially when we see how much people want it, especially the carers themselves.

“You don’t see the relief on their faces, but you know they bring someone along to the dementia day care centre and then they can go off and do what they need to do. It’s really draining for them; in a way it’s like looking after children.”

Emma is happy to clarify a misconception held by some that Hoylake Cottage does not need fund-raising support as the centre charges fees.

She said: “Yes we charge fees but those fees go into running the nursing unit and the daycare centre, but it isn’t enough, so it’s topped up with fund-raising. But I think some people have this conception that we have trustees, and they get paid, and they get expenses, but it’s far from the truth.

“If we weren’t a charity and we were relying just on the business, we wouldn’t have a new building, we would be carrying on in the old building, which would just be falling apart, and then it would be downhill and would ultimately be closed.

“It’s sometimes hard to help people understand what happens here, what dementia is. We are with it all the time here, but unless you have personal experience of that loss, of dementia, yourself it’s very hard to understand what it means.

“But unless you know of someone who gets dementia, it’s very hard for people toconnect with what it really means and what we are trying to achieve.”