The story of CHAD and Jasmyn HouseIn the beginning
Way back in the 1970's, a group of charities for the disabled in Torbay began to work together. They called themselves the 'Community for the Handicapped and Disabled', CHAD for short. In due course they decided to try to raise a lot of money with which to purchase a home of their own, where every group could have a room for their weekly activities. Local businessmen heard of this worthy cause and resolved to form a fundraising committee. The Chairman at the time was a young estate agent by the name of Gordon Oliver.
By 1984 they had raised enough, or so they thought, and they purchased the house of the former owner of Hollacombe Gasworks, which is now closed. However, they found that they did not have enough to furnish and equip it. Then Torbay Hospital came to the rescue. They bought it, set it up properly, and charged CHAD a peppercorn rent to use the magnificent fit for purpose facilities, and named it the Chadwell Centre.
The Chadwell Centre
Not only did the Centre provide every group with a very fine meeting room, it also furnished them with a fully equipped therapy room. The therapy room was staffed by professionals, mostly from Torbay Hospital, giving support to members according to their various disabilities.
Rev Peter Killick, as Deputy Mayor in 2004, was invited to the first birthday party of Revive, a group for people with permanent back pain who met at the Chadwell Centre. He was amazed at the cheerfulness and courage of these men and women who never knew what it was to go through a day without constant pain.
Sadly, in around 2009, Torbay Hospital decided that it needed the premises for offices. CHAD would have to find alternative accommodation, but the Therapy room alone could continue. To this day the building is still known as the Chadwell Centre.
Rented accommodation in the Hollacombe RC Torbay Hospital helped the disabled groups of CHAD to rent the nearby Hollacombe Resource Centre. This is used as a day centre by Torbay's Learning Disabilities service who do a really excellent job. However as the Learning Disabilities meet during the day, our groups could only meet in the evenings after the Learning Disabilities group had gone home. Also of course, the facilities could never be a patch on those at the old Chadwell Centre, and subsequently a few of our disabled groups, who had been with us from the beginning, left to find alternative accommodation, and in most of the groups that remained, attendances began to fall.
It was during this time that the Rev Peter Killick became the Chairman of CHAD. The administration had been allowed to get in a bit of a pickle, and we first had to sort that out. Then our small committee settled down to running the six remaining groups. Our big hope for the future was that the Torbay Adult Trust would find us a place in their new Wellbeing Centre, planned for part of what is now the car park of the Leisure Centre. But as the years went by, it became more and more doubtful that this would ever get built, and if it did, whether it would be so reduced in scale and therefore there would be no room for us.
Search for a New Home
About 2 1/2 years ago, the committee asked itself a big question - 'seeing that we have a large sum of money invested, why don't we look for a property for ourselves?'
After all, they say that the best form of investment these days is in bricks and mortar. We put the idea to the leaders of the six remaining groups, and they enthusiastically gave us the green light to go ahead. However, after spending a whole year looking at various properties that were on the market, we did not find one that met our requirements. At this point, as you can imagine we were a bit despondent.
Then, at the beginning of 2012 our Treasurer, who lives in Paignton, spotted a 'For Sale' notice at 1 Midvale Road. We had not seen it in any of the estate agents adverts. So we inquired, and had a look at it. It seemed to tick all our boxes. We asked the agent to show us around, and were still impressed. We met the owner, who seemed a good man to deal with, and then we arranged a second viewing, this time with the leaders of the groups, after which we knew that it was 'All systems go'!
So, throughout 2012 we went through the lengthy process of negotiations with the help of our solicitors. We had a survey done, and this showed us that the property was basically in sound order, except for work needing to be done on the roof which the owner agreed to carry out. We had to satisfy the Charity Commissioners, and of course last but by no means least, a full meeting of our members at a special AGM.
Finally, on a very special date, the keys to 1 Midvale Road were handed over to us by the previous owner on the 12th December 2012.
Welcome to Jasmyn House
We have proudly named the property at 1 Midvale Road as Jasmyn House. Jasmyn Turton was one of the founder members of CHAD back in 1970's, a severely disabled lady, who never for one minute allowed her condition to cramp her style. Over many years, she had been the life and soul of the party. Sadly she passed away in 2010, but we hope that she will be able to look down upon us with her cheery blessing.