Eastbourne adult care centre finally opens - after 20-year £3m fundraiser

Gow Lodge, on the site of the former Edgemond Church on Church Street in Eastbourne’s Old Town, will house eight adults and enable them to enjoy semi-independent living as well as benefit from training on offer at the Old Town Café, which is also on site.

The centre was officially opened by His Majesty’s Lord-Lieutenant of East Sussex, Andrew Blackman, on 14 July. Also present were the Mayor of Eastbourne, Candy Vaughan, as well as a large crowd of supporters and some of the new tenants, students, and their families.

Founder Jill Parker, a former nurse, has devoted her life making the voice of the learning disabled heard after realising in the early 1980s that her daughter Katie, now aged 44, would need additional support throughout her life.

Over the last four decades Jill has set up a variety of charities to support her cause and ran the Downland Farm Project at Willingdon, which provided training in all aspects of hospitality and housekeeping for many young adults with additional needs. She set up the JPK Project with her friend Leonie Turner to raise money for parents who would one day be too old to look after their teenage and adult children, who could not live by themselves.

Mrs Parker - who was awarded an MBE in 2017 for services to people with disabilities - began with a tea party which raised a few hundred pounds, eventually reaching the £3 million required over 20 years later. The group named themselves after John-Paul, Leonie’s son, and Katie, Jill’s daughter, who were the inspiration behind their endeavour.

Gow Lodge has eight en-suite rooms as well as a communal kitchen and living area, plus access to computers and laundry facilities. Many of the people who will live there have also earned catering accreditations at the Old Town Café next door, which opened in 2017.

The charity struggled for a long time to find a site or to win support from local adult services, relying on fundraising and volunteers to keep the JPK vision alive. Jill’s late mother, Sylvia, even chained herself to railings on her 90th birthday in 2010 to protest against the refusal of East Sussex County Council’s education department to release a portion of derelict land, for which the JPK Project had received Planning Consent from Eastbourne Borough Council to build their much-needed centre. But the long struggle has finally come to an end with what Jill says is – in retrospect – the perfect location in the heart of Old Town.

JPK founder, Jill Parker MBE, said: “We have fought for over 20 years to be a voice for people who cannot speak for themselves. Caring for children and adults with disabilities is a full-time job, but the worry of what would happen to our sons and daughters once we were too old to look after them drove us on.

“We are thrilled that our supported living centre is finally open to give opportunities to people with a learning disability and hope to all families whose loved ones need extra care.”