As The Pink Place recognises its 15th year of offering well-being support to people in North Hampshire living with cancer, it is important to highlight our ongoing challenges as a small charity.
Navigating Covid and having to move the charity’s base placed enormous pressure on our small team but also helped us evolve as a structured organisation. Of course, ensuring a manageable and sustainable future for the charity is an absolute priority, especially as demand grows, resources become more expensive, and funding becomes harder to come by.
With this in mind, the trustees have taken the very difficult decision to divert two services that the charity currently offers, both of which will be phased out by the end of May 2025.
Firstly, our twice-monthly sessions delivered in Alton will unfortunately be closing. Introduced in 2019, these meetings have become increasingly challenging to deliver to a high level of quality due to ongoing resource issues.
All of the relevant services we offer will still be available to guests at our groups held in Basingstoke, as they are to all adults across North Hampshire, and we are pleased that some of our Alton-based residents are already using our facilities at The Orchard and our Pink Place Extra Group.
Craig Killick, Chair of Trustees, said,
“The decision to phase out our Alton session has not been taken lightly. We know the challenges it will bring to some of our guests, and although it is not ideal, we hope they will continue to travel to Basingstoke for the peer group support sessions delivered weekly across two groups.
“With limited resources and the increased costs we face as a small charity, guiding the organisation in a sustainable way has led us to make some very difficult decisions. We fully understand how this may impact some of our guests, and our incredibly dedicated team will work with them to provide them with the support they need.”
The other area of The Pink Place being phased out is The Blue Space. This specific offering aimed at men, which was introduced in 2016, has never gained sufficient traction despite a constant drive to recruit male guests.
As a charity, we have invested a lot of time and effort trying to engage men, but this has not been as successful as we would have liked. With other local support organisations in place for men living with cancer, moving forward, we will support any enquiries from men through referral.
“The charity sector continues to face huge difficulties across the board, and I am sure we are not the only organisation currently having to make some very difficult decisions. We are a relatively small charity. To create a sustainable future, with our specific challenges - and as part of an eco-system of the other wonderful local charities available - we must focus our support to maximise our impact, working with other specialist organisations to meet the growing local demand for cancer support.”
The Pink Place will continue to offer two peer support groups every week in Basingstoke. These are open to anyone in the North Hampshire area, along with our range of complementary therapies and other sessions such as yoga, mindfulness and one-to-one counselling.
Please direct any enquiries to craig@thepinkplace.org.uk
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