RAINBOW FAMILY CARE CENTRE
Club Rainbow's first purpose-built facility, The Rainbow Family Care Centre (RFCC), began operations on 15th January 2007.
Our previous office located at a third level of a shophouse in Bukit Pasoh Road was both inaccessible to children in wheelchairs and covering just 147.8 sq metres, it was too small to conduct many of our activities. Storage space was also getting increasing tight. Meetings and counselling sessions were done in a small general-purpose room which could seat only about 10 people. It was too small for many of our activities such as group tuition, sharing sessions and workshops.The lack of in-house facilities meant that almost all of our programmes had to be conducted in an ad-hoc manner in rented or “borrowed” premises. The costs and availability of such facilities had impacted the number of programmes we could offer to our children and families.
In August 2006, we secured a site at the 5th-level void deck of Block 538 Upper Cross Street as the location for the RFCC. The site covers an area of about 447 square metres. We would like to thank Member of Parliament Denise Phua of Jalan Besar GRC for her strong endorsement of the Centre as well as the Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports and the Housing and Development Board for their help. Our sincere thanks also go out to Starhub for their generous donation of $200,000 for the renovation of the centre. [See report: Club Rainbow sets up Rainbow Family Care Centre (Channel News Asia - December 13 2006)
A five minute walk from Chinatown MRT station, the RFCC is easily accessible via the North-East Line for our children who are seeking treatment at the Singapore General Hospital and the KK Women’s and Children's Hospital.
What's inside
Inside the centre, which is wheel-chair and disabled friendly, there is a multi-media training room for teaching, seminars and workshops. There is also an activity room for programmes including tuition, painting, arts and craft, dance and music lessons. In time we also hope to offer specialised therapy sessions.
There are meeting rooms for counselling sessions, group discussions and as workspace for meetings and volunteer activities. 
Click here to see the layout of the centre.
Activities
The RFCC is now the focal for our services and programmes. These include:
• Individual and family counselling, marital counselling and bereavement counselling
• Group counselling, group work therapy, sharing sessions and parent support group activities
• Talks, courses, seminars and workshops
• Specific activities for our main illness groups – HeartKids Support Group, Liver Support Group, Spina Bifida Support Group, Premies Group, and Thalassaemia Major Support Group
• Individual and group tuition for children
• E-learning, screening educational programmes on cable and movie sharing sessions for youths
• Enrichment programmes – drawing, art, craftwork, web design etc
• Therapy sessions such as Art Therapy and Music Therapy
• Meetings and project work for our youth groups
• Volunteer activities – helping in admin work, training sessions
• Meet the Management sessions – for parents to meet with our volunteer management council.
Community Involvement
As the first and only Club Rainbow community-based outreach centre to be located in the HDB heartlands, it gives us a unique opportunity to involve civic groups, schools in the vicinity and neighbouring companies to support some of our programmes and beneficiaries.
School groups are invited to volunteer their services and work with our Rainbow Children. Residents too can have a stake in Club Rainbow. Housewives and retirees from the neighbourhood can help us run some of our programmes, be a Befriender to our children and help out with administrative work.
Such community involvement can go far in promoting better understanding of the plight of children with chronic illnesses and forge lasting bonds with the charity.
Whenever possible, we will allow other illness support groups to make use our facilities. Over time, we envision the RFCC will evolve into the focal point for promoting synergised support for all children who suffer from a wide range of chronic illnesses.
For more details on the RFCC please contact Club Rainbow on 6377-1789 or email contact@clubrainbow.org