Extension and refurbishment
Brownscombe House: CHD Living celebrates forty years of care
Family-run CHD Living recently marked its 40 year anniversary with a celebration at Brownscombe House, the provider’s first care home. The Care Home Environment Editor Matt Seex attended the event to chat with CHD Living director Shaleeza Hasham and founder and CEO Liakat Hasham about the changes that have been made to Brownscombe House over the years, and CHD Living’s past, present, and future
Nestled among mature trees and landscaped grounds close to the historic town of Haslemere in Surrey, Brownscombe House was the first care home to be owned and operated by CHD Living, a family-run care provider with a growing portfolio of care homes and other care facilities and services across the county. I visited Brownscombe House on a warm,
sunny day in July to attend CHD Living’s 40 year anniversary celebrations. Before they began, however, I sat down with director Shaleeza Hasham and her father, founder and CEO Liakat Hasham, to discuss the beginnings of CHD Living, the expansion of Brownscombe House over the past few decades, the provider’s values and ethos, and much more besides.
A family affair Having arrived in the UK in 1972 after fleeing Idi Amin’s brutal regime in Uganda, the Hasham family – drawn to Surrey by the opportunities presented by the area’s higher than average elderly population – bought Brownscombe House from the British arm of Italian typewriter manufacturer Olivetti in 1984, with the family moving into a small cottage on the site while they set about the business of transforming Brownscombe House – originally built in 1898 – into a 19-bed nursing home. Having gained a business loan from
Barclays Bank, the family named their company Care Homes of Distinction, becoming CHD Living around 15 years ago to distinguish themselves from another similarly named company, but retaining the ‘CHD’, with a staff and resident poll deciding upon ‘Creating Happiness Daily’ as a more fitting name and mission statement. From the very beginning in 1984, then,
October 2024
www.thecarehomeenvironment.com
Brownscombe House and CHD Living was very much a family affair. “I was born a year later,” Shaleeza Hasham tells me. “Our grandparents lived with us. Granny was the cook, Granddad did maintenance; my other set of grandparents did all the upholstery. It was just an incredible childhood growing up here.” Having worked hard to become an
We’re a third-generation family business, committed to the sector and what we do
integral part of the local community, the Hasham family first extended Brownscombe House in the 1990s, taking care to ensure that the home retained its unique and historic character. This included the retention of a number of striking hand- carved doors, shipped from Nepal by the original Victorian owners of the house. By the mid-2010s, CHD decided to extend and refurbish the home once again. “We didn’t really put any large-scale
investment into the property until 2017/18, when we started looking at how we could
15
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60
