The Jules Thorn Day Centre

• IT’S not unusual that when something is taken away from us we quite soon completely forget about it and just carry on.

This could be said about The Jules Thorn Day Centre in the grounds of St Pancras Hospital, run under the aegis of Camden and Islington Mental Health Trust.

For nearly 40 years the centre had provided excellent care to hundreds of patients with mental health symptoms and was known to thousands of parents, siblings, partners and carers.

Come the Covid-19 pandemic and it was decided by the trust that users could not come to the centre.

So, following a refurbishment, the centre pops up as a call centre and assessment centre for users coming via self-referral, GPs, and any number of medical practitioners.

After being triaged users would be kept in a room, usually overnight, before going on to a hospital or their home. No day hospital for them because it has closed!

You may well be saying “What a good idea to assess these people”. But nothing lasts for ever and in two years the whole building will be razed to the ground to make way for a new hospital for the blind, coming up from Old Street. All the wards will go and probably the Rivers Crisis Centre too.

So you didn’t know about this? I am so sorry. Someone must have forgotten to tell the public via a public consultation.

Of course, there may have been some ads in the back of this newspaper but precious little opportunity to make a point!

Perhaps your memories may be even fuzzier when I list the number of closures in recent years: The Fordwych Day Hospital in West Hampstead, The Felix Brown Day Hospital in The Royal Free Hospital, all mental health beds in The Royal Free, Daleham Gardens Day Centre near The Tavistock, The Highgate Day Centre in Kentish Town, opposite the fire station, The Hoo counselling centre in Lyndhurst Gardens and, finally, The Jules Thorn Centre.

What, I hear you say, all of those? Well, yes.

But, of course, there will be a brand new hospital in the grounds of the Whittington which is not too far away, up a hill!

There will also be a council building in Kentish Town which is where it all gets a bit fuzzy, probably because the publicity isn’t up to much.

So there we have it. And I wonder what Jules Thorn thinks about it all, having made a big enough donation back in 1980 to warrant having his name put on the front of the building.

It’s not there any more. And neither are the day centres. Woe is me!

CHRISTOPHER MASON
Hawley Road, NW1