Making every day better
Areas we support
Your support helps us achieve key areas across our hospital and community-based services.
The difference you make
Every year hundreds of individuals, community groups and businesses generously donate money to help us achieve our aims and support key areas across our hospital and community-based services.
Your donations help us do so much more, such as funding specialist equipment, improving environments, and supporting volunteering services and staff wellbeing. It is our job to make sure that the donations are spent carefully and for the purposes for which it was given.
Specialist equipment
The charity has funded equipment such as Reminiscence/Rehabilitation & Interactive Therapy Activities (RITAs).
RITAs are an all-in-one touch screen solution which offers digital reminiscence therapy, a relatively new tool in the fields of nursing and healthcare. RITAs encompass the use of user-friendly interactive screens and tablets to blend entertainment with therapy and to assist patients (particularly with memory impairments) in recalling and sharing events from their past through listening to music, watching news reports of significant historical events, listening to wartime speeches, playing games and karaoke, and watching films.
Improved environments
Improved environments such as a newly refurbished playroom in our children’s ward. The welcoming room has a bright and fun underwater theme and is equipped with activities and toys suitable for all young patients and there is now plenty of storage space for arts and crafts activities, a wet area, and a gallery where children’s artwork can be proudly displayed. There is also a reading corner for those children who may need some quiet time. The playroom helps to relieve stress from families but also helps staff engage with the children.
Supporting volunteering services
The charity received a grant of £97,047 from NHS Charities Together and the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS) as part of their Volunteering Futures Fund (VFF).
We used the funding from the VFF to expand our existing student volunteering programme by training ten of our existing Trust volunteers as mentors and best practice assessors.
These individuals have gone on to help over 200 new young volunteers, who had previously found it hard to get into volunteering, by taking on a range of roles that support different services within the Trust, including the emergency department, patient experience, and administration.
Talking about their experiences and what they hoped to gain from the programme, youth volunteers Hirah, Ellis and Charlie said:
“I wanted to get some volunteering experience as I want to apply to study medicine at university and this sort of experience will really help me.”
“I’m hoping to gain lots of hospital experience to go toward my future career as I want to go into mental health nursing.”
“As a future career I want to go into nursing, so volunteering in a hospital and seeing people working on the wards has helped me understand how people do their jobs.”
The project finished in April 2023, but we are still encouraging VFF participants, who have been with us for some time, to get involved in mentoring new young volunteers. Training for all new young volunteers will take place online following investment by the Trust into the online spring pod training platform.
Supporting staff wellbeing
Staff health and wellbeing is incredibly important to us, and we are proud to have been able to fund a new wellbeing room for our maternity staff at Russells Hall Hospital.
During the pandemic, the charity led informal engagement feedback sessions which included staff representatives from across our hospital sites and our community services.
Staff shared what improvements they felt would make the biggest difference to their working lives. Suggestions included medical equipment or enhancements that support patients and their families as well as the need for staff wellbeing initiatives and in particular the need for improved indoor and outdoor spaces for staff.
The maternity department had a very small staff room which, with social distancing, made it difficult for the number of staff on shift, at any one time, to take a break comfortably. The Trust charity was fortunate to receive charitable donations from members of the public, community groups and companies such as In-Touch Games during COVID and it was decided that some of these funds would be used to create a dedicated wellbeing space for the maternity department staff. The teams wanted a ‘comfy sofa’, a place to lock away their phones in charging pods, as well as a calming space to reset after a difficult day!
Head of maternity, Claire MacDiarmid shared, “The need to take a moment away from your shift in a comfortable and peaceful space isn’t always easy to do in such a fast-paced environment. But to now have a dedicated room designed for our staff to do just this and more is incredibly beneficial for both them, and ultimately our patients too.”
