The gift comes as Chelsea and Westminster and its charity, CW+, are working with partners from across London to establish the NHS Best For You programme to help address the rapidly increasing number of young people experiencing deteriorating mental health. The Reuben Young People’s Centre will be a cornerstone of the programme, designed to help provide immediate, specialist, and integrated care to young people in mental health crisis.

The centre will be the largest of its kind in London combining, for the first time, mental and physical care in one dedicated environment for adolescents. Building on Chelsea and Westminster’s position as a national leader in both digital innovation and clinical estate design, the centre will be a holistic but digitally enhanced environment, designed in collaboration with clinicians, academics, young people, and their families and carers to help create the optimum environment for recovery and incorporating the latest in digital sensor technologies and enhancements. Lesley Watts, chief executive of Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, said: “The centre will enable us to provide the very-best care for young people from across our region. “Importantly, it will also help inform new national standard of care for young people in an acute hospital setting and will enable us to play a central role in addressing the growing national crisis in young people’s mental health and wellbeing.”

Lisa Reuben, trustee of the Reuben Foundation, added: “The impact of the pandemic on children and young people has been profound and, as a family, we were determined to play our part in ensuring this group receives the care and support they need to begin the process of recovery and readjustment. “We believe the Reuben Young People’s Centre has an important role to play in this process and we hope this approach will also act as a template that other communities and NHS organisations will benefit from.”

www.reubenfoundation.com