The Griffin Community Trust

The roots of the Griffin concept lie in a small group of medical students with first-hand knowledge of the deprivation in the East End of London who came together in 1988 to discuss ways in which they could help people in the area in which they lived and studied. They were particularly concerned about the unsatisfactory homes that many of their elderly patients had to endure. The befriending scheme that arose from this concern, and a shortage of student flats, led to the idea of sharing accommodation.

Ten years later their idea had been realised in the Lansbury Lodge development, which provides sheltered housing for 32 elderly people and a block of six flats, Griffin House, for 24 medical and dental students.

The Ł800,000 that it cost to build and equip the students' flats was raised by the Griffin Community Trust, a charity founded by students and staff of the London Hospital Medical College with the help of business people and retired senior executives in local government. Griffin has harnessed youthful innovation to the experience and networks of established figures, who have piloted the scheme through the financial, legal, and administrative channels where imaginative ideas often run aground.

In 1988 a group of students, at what was then the London Hospital Medical College, became concerned about the fears expressed by many of their elderly patients about returning home, where they felt lonely and cut off from their families and community. The medical and dental students too had housing problems - suitable lodgings close to the hospital were in short supply. Everyday hospital contacts with people of their Grandparents' generation, who had an extraordinary breadth of experience of life in the East End of london, had also impressed the students in a different way. They had found that relationships between those with considerable experience in life and those who have yet to gain it may be easier: perhaps there is less competition and more acceptance between these age groups? Viewed in the broader context of the blitz, examination stresses took on a different perspective.

Though the need for student accommodation was less pressing than it is now, an idea took hold. Medical students and local elderly people might both benefit from being neighbours. The Griffin project aims to bring together in one residential community those elderly people from Tower Hamlets who require a safe and caring community and medical and dental students from the local teaching hospital. Fortuitously, the emblem of the students' social organisation, the London Hospital Medical College Clubs Union, was the Griffin, a mythical beast said to act as a watchful guardian.

The first meeting of what was to become the Griffin Community Trust was attended by three students - Veronica White, Simon Lee, and Charlie Siderfin - and two members of staff who were involved in the London Hospital Medical College Clubs Union - Dr Peter McCrorie (senior president) and Dr Peter Mills (senior treasurer). What follows is an account of how the Griffin ideal became bricks and mortar.

The evolution of the Griffin Community Trust has relied on the unstinted commitment of successive generations of students. Each year since 1988 it has had a student committee with a chairman, secretary, and treasurer, all of whom knew that they would not benefit directly from the ultimate success of the project. The students have been remarkably effective and determined in running their own structured befriending scheme in the local community and liasing with Toynbee Hall to develop Griffin into an effective and credible organisation. At all times, the project has relied on student enthusiasm and commitment. To the roots of sustained student interest and enthusiasm we have grafted advice from various more established figures with the expertise and contacts that were essential to the realisation of the Griffin ideal. The fact that we now have a building is a lasting tribute to all their efforts.