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Faith in hospital system?
• THE timely letter (Weighing up the costs of Tamiflu, Letters, September 10), refers to the closure of The Well, a multi-faith centre at St Pancras Hospital, and asks what options might have been weighed in the balance when the decision was made.
Indeed on May 12 this year, the feast day of St Pancras, this new space for reflection and prayer was opened to great acclaim.
For many years staff on the site had been prompting the trusts that they had an obligation, indeed latterly a specific responsibility, to provide such a space.
After a joint letter three years ago from me and my Muslim colleague asking that this situation be addressed, we were all delighted with the outcome.
This was a most beautiful space, created in an old chapel, a place for people of faith and none to be quiet, to pray, to reflect, to take stock.
A great momentum of interest and excitement developed.
A really imaginative plan was put together to create a place of beauty to inspire and attract.
This was a priority – in a time of great pressure on financial resources – to spend a significant sum on such a venture had to work. And inspire it did; I am told that in the planning and permission-seeking there was only one dissenting voice.
On the day of opening The Well looked fantastic.
The centrepiece, a beautiful wooden sculpture, a mouthwatering lunch was provided, and a packed building with staff and patients looking forward to the beginning of this new chapter in the life of St Pancras Hospitals.
We were celebrating! Spiritual needs of patients are central to the health agenda; the need to value NHS staff in a climate of change a pressing need for our executives. The Well was really contributing to the trusts’ grappling with the need to address these two issues courageously. On the day of the opening many staff, of no faith community in particular, told me of their delight in feeling valued enough for such a dedicated space to have been supported by their employers.
Mental health nurses were pleased that at last patients unable to leave the grounds could now come to a place of peace, and a place of prayer. The trusts were rightly congratulated and, I hope, rightly proud.
In the days and weeks that passed it was rarely empty, a well-used new resource.
Today The Well sits closed, taken away as a dedicated space with no explanation, in a venture to provide a facility which many medical professionals seem to believe would have been better placed elsewhere. Staff who momentarily felt appreciated are angry and often too afraid to comment, wondering what went wrong.
The rescued wooden sculpture, pushed into a cupboard, sits in a local church looking for its home.
Members of the local community who had been encouraged to enjoy and celebrate this space, are left asking questions about use of financial resources and what looks like a waste of investment in The Well.
Patients unable to leave the grounds still looking for their right to worship, pray, and have access to a multi-faith facility,.
So I do think the question was a good one. What options were weighed in the balance?
Fr Bruce Batstone
Parish Priest
St Pancras Old Church
Chaplain at St Pancras Hospitals
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