Marc Jobson, manager of the health and wellbeing hub in Budleigh Salterton, writes for the Journal.
Three years ago, our community came together to breathe new life into Budleigh Hospital.
It had been closed for a number of years, after it was decided that inpatient beds were no longer required in our area.
However, the Budleigh Hospital’s ‘League of Friends’ raised significant funds to redevelop the Hospital, and working with the NHS and Westbank, it grew into its current Health and Wellbeing Hub format.
We are legally still a hospital. In fact, we are the only hospital without any beds.
Our ethos is prevention rather than cure, so in theory less beds will be needed.
We aim to improve the health and wellbeing of all our communities including Woodbury, Exmouth and Budleigh.
We may be based in Budleigh but our reach extends beyond its town boundary. People come to us from far afield to experience our activities and services.
Over these last three years, I think we have done pretty well. I might also be ever so slightly biased.
With that in mind I commissioned an evaluation of our services, activities and support services. This evaluation has taken over five months to complete and the results are in.
The headline figure of which I am most proud, is that we save the health and social care sector £340,000 a year through our loneliness and falls prevention work alone.
This is a massive amount saved for our NHS. On top of this we put £300,000 into the local economy through employment and supporting local social enterprises. We also do more work, partnering and facilitating other organisations to do their good work.
There are many other numbers and facts in the evaluation but for me, the most compelling element is the stories from users detailing their journey through the Hub.
Many tell of people coming for one service, for example counselling, then moving on to use others such as the gym, volunteering and then working for one of our social enterprises or even setting up their own business. The consistent theme is, those that come here for a little help give back tenfold.
As we progress, the hope is we will continue to help others and save the NHS even more money.
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