On the morning of 5 October 2024, we will be hosting an event to officially move Lucy’s Room from being an Oxford Health Charity Appeal to being a new space for the wards and teams to start using. 

Lucy's Room has developed from an idea to a reality over the past six years and our appeal has been the focus of fundraising and development throughout that time.  

We will be celebrating this achievement with Lucy’s family and friends as well as colleagues from across the Trust.  It will be an opportunity to look at the room and landscaped garden space, talk about how the room will be used as we move forward and find out more about the impact of music on recovery.  It is particularly fitting that this handover takes place just before World Mental Health Day (10 October) as music was so important to Lucy, and others, for their mental health and wellbeing.  The theme of World Mental Health Day this year is workplace mental health and we hope that the space at Lucy’s Room will also support staff wellbeing through providing an additional space for contemplation in it’s garden.

We are so excited to be reaching the final stages of our Lucy’s Room Appeal this autumn and would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has been involved in making Lucy’s Room come to life.

The Lucy’s Room Appeal was set up in collaboration with Lucy’s family to create a music room at the Warneford Hospital for adult mental health patients being supporting in the wards and by community teams based there.  Lucy had received care through those same teams and had missed having a space to play and make music during that time.  Following her passing, Lucy’s family wanted to create that space that she had been missing for other patients to benefit from in the future.  The Appeal was created in 2018 and along with donations from the Oxford Health Charity and Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust, Lucy’s family have been fundraising throughout the last six years to enable the room to be created.

With huge thanks to the team at Portakabin, the building for Lucy’s Room was brought onto site in 2023 and by working with local social enterprises, Chiltern Rangers and RAW, the landscaping and design for the outside of the building was created to bring the whole space at the Warneford Hospital to life.  The project has benefitted from the support of volunteers from wards, the wider Charity and Involvement Team, the Oxford Health Arts Partnership, Chiltern Rangers, Johnson and Johnson and Headington School as well as the ongoing support of the Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust Estates team, and it would not have been possible to make the space as welcoming and engaging as it is without this.  We are also grateful to all the patients who have given ideas and views on how Lucy’s Room can have the most positive impact for them through focus groups and consultation sessions hosted by the Activity Coordinators, Oxford Health Arts Partnership and wider ward teams – it is so important to us and Lucy’s family that this space makes a real difference to those struggling with mental ill health.

Our appeal will stay open to help fund instruments, equipment and additional artist led activities within Lucy's Room - if you wish to donate, you can do so through Lucy's Room Appeal.