Hope House Children’s Hospices’ purpose-built counselling centre will be unveiled to families, supporters and health care professionals this June.

The Sunstone Counselling Centre has been built on land next to the Hope House Children’s Hospice at Morda, Oswestry. It cost £1.5million to build and, like the hospice, has been funded with donations from individuals, groups, companies and trusts from across the region.

The centre will provide a home for the hospice’s existing specialist counselling team who until now have worked from a single counselling room within the hospice.

The new building will enable the team to extend their support to even more children and families, including families in the wider community who have lost a child and children who have been bereaved in traumatic circumstances.

The centre has a series of self-contained rooms for individual and group counselling which overlook tranquil gardens. Staff chose the name Sunstone Counselling Centre because the sunstone is the symbol for protection and positive outcomes.

Chief Executive Andy Goldsmith said the opening of the centre demonstrated the commitment of Hope House Children’s Hospices to providing the best quality counselling and bereavement support to all families facing childhood bereavement, in whatever circumstances.

“At Hope House we have a philosophy of care to provide counselling and bereavement support in accordance with a family’s wishes for as long as it is needed” he added.

“This building provides a calm and tranquil setting for providing this support and marks a big milestone in the delivery of our care philosophy. It is a huge achievement and we are so very grateful to all our generous supporters whose donations have made the centre possible.”

Families, supporters and health care professionals are being specially invited to see the centre this week, before the official opening by retiring Chief Executive David Featherstone on June 29.