Our History

Reflections leased a country house in Cornwall in December 2009 to pilot a new way of providing day care services for people with dementia. Prior to this our CEO, Angela Downing, had spent two years researching various types of dementia services both here in the UK and further afield. Angela was aware the there were hundreds of people living with dementia in the local area with little resources available.

In March 2010, Angela invited David Sheard, Director of Dementia Care Matters, to come to Cornwall to give two seminars on what Person Centred Care should feel/look like and used these seminars as a way of bringing people in the health and social care sector to visit Reflections.

In April 2010, Reflections was delighted to welcome the first service user to the centre.

In these early months Reflections received support from Cornwall's NHS to provide Cognitive Stimulation Therapy in partnership with Age UK, and to provide a carers support group.

In June 2010, Reflections was chosen as a centre of good practice for a visit by the then new National Clinical Director for Dementia, Professor Alistair Burns.

Later that year Reflections was successful in obtaining some funding from the Duchy Health Charity, for that support we will always be grateful for in our early days.

That year Reflections also joined the memory café network supported by Cornwall's Rural Community Council.

Reflections also secured a grant from Awards For All, Lottery Funding, to purchase the latest digital reminiscence system.

During 2011 it became apparent that new premises were needed in order to expand and thus began a search of every grant funder/social investor in the UK to try and secure funding to purchase a property. The CEO, Angela Downing teamed up with Resonance Ltd and both parties spent months working on securing finance. In November 2011 Reflections heard the wonderful news that they had been successful in their application to the Social Investment Business for a fund they manage on behalf of the Department Of Health.

The funding secured was to purchase St Joseph's Convent in Redruth.

Reflections enjoyed four wonderful years at Parkhenver in Redruth. Sadly however, due to huge overheads and falling numbers of service users, in Dec 2016 we took the decision to sell the property and purchase the lease on the former Conservation Centre in Tuckingmill Valley Park. In May 2017 we moved into our wonderful new eco friendly centre.