One of the positives to come out of the Covid-19 pandemic has been the outpouring of public support for hardworking NHS staff.

Over the last several weeks our charity, the King George and Queen’s Hospital Charity, has been inundated with kind donations to help keep our staff going – from pizzas and curries, to hand cream, piles of Easter eggs (12,500!), snacks and even sofas for our wellbeing rooms.

Stacey English, (pictured above left with some of the generous donations), usually the events coordinator for our charity, has found herself in an entirely new role coordinating food and drinks donations across our teams.

Here she gives her own account of adapting to a new role during a difficult time.

Stacey said: “I’ve been with our Trust for two years. Before that I worked on large scale medical events and facilities management so when Covid-19 hit my former experience came to the fore.

For large medical conferences you have to be able to work reactively, calmly, and efficiently, focusing on getting the task completed quickly.

When our team were asked to handle food donations I knew it would be a logistical challenge – however, as my past experience would help I volunteered for it.

While some donations are given to NHS staff as a whole, which we can the share fairly across all teams in our Trust, when a donor specifically states where they want theirs to go, 100 pizzas for our Intensive Care Unit and Emergency Department for example, then that’s exactly where it will go.

And so you know we’re keeping you safe, everyone who donates food is asked to provide a hygiene certificate.

So how does it work? I’m responsible for liaising directly with the donors, finding out what they’re donating, the number of portions, and timings. I also have a breakdown of wards and department with staff numbers, which helps with allocating enough for everyone.

Once I know what’s being donated when, I email the wards and departments who’ll be benefitting, letting them know what they’ll be allocated and where to collect from.

So far, I’ve allocated over 92,300 portions of food and drink across our hospitals – a staggering amount which really demonstrates how much our hardworking staff are valued by our communities. One local restaurant alone sends us 1,000 curries every day! I was also dumbfounded when a single mum on a low-income offered £20 to buy a pizza for our staff.

In addition, my colleague Michelle Fox has overseen delivery of over 22,000 items including drinks and toiletries. She’s been off-loading pallets and loading trollies so we can distribute these to staff – including giving wellbeing boxes and survival bags to displaced staff staying in hotels. It’s certainly kept us busy and fit!

Special thanks to two new members of our team – Kasey Carter and Lesley Campbell who’ve been redeployed to us. They’ve rolled up their sleeves and really mucked in.

It has been a struggle at times – especially getting the food into our hospitals as we introduced more stringent visitor restrictions. However, it’s always been made possible thanks to the support of lots of other teams – our Goods Receiving, Security and Bed and Site teams, as well as front desk staff and porters.

Please allow me to say a few thank yous to people who have really helped to make my job easier:

• John Barnes, Jason Attewal and Mohammed Kabir from Goods Receiving who have moved heaven and earth to help us offload and deliver large donations, particularly where wards are unable to collect them.
• Monika Mesuria on the front desk who has been a fantastic help with out of hours food deliveries – and often lends an extra pair of hands to help me!
• Richard Smith, Head of Security, and Mark Chinery for their ongoing support and help with heavy deliveries.
• Alisa Aitken and the rest of our Bed and Site team who have also helped with out of hours deliveries.
• And a big thank you to my colleague and buddy Michelle Fox who’s been my right-hand woman – couldn’t have done it without you Michelle!

We have a fantastic team and it’s an honour to work at our Trust, especially now. Meeting so many more staff during this time I can clearly see their passion and commitment.

I think I speak for all of us when I say that the love and support shown by our communities has been truly humbling.

We’re all in this together and if we continue to support each other, we will get through to better days!