Bags of love for hospital patients
YOUNGSTERS’ GROUPS RESTART TOILETRIES SCHEME
PATIENTS who have been admitted to hospital in an emergency are being given bags containing vital essentials by a group of caring children.
Youngsters from Guides, Brownies and Rainbows groups in Burton have restarted delivering comfort bags to patients now lockdown has eased.
Each bag contains travel-sized toiletries in comfort bags for any patient who has been admitted in an emergency situation to Queen’s Hospital in the town and does not have anything with them.
Last week, the Burton Trefoil Guild, in conjunction with Girl Guiding in Burton, delivered the 1,000th comfort bag to the hospital.
The scheme started almost two years ago, when the Belvedere Road hospital contacted Staffs County Guiding HQ asking whether the Burton guild would be interested in helping to introduce the bags in the town.
The guild agreed to take on the project, along with some other guilds within the county, who deliver to other hospitals in Staffordshire. It took some months to get the scheme running, getting it approved by Infection Control, and the first few bags were delivered to the bereavement office in October 2018.
This was on quite a small scale, until the guild started to deliver the bags directly to the wards in June last year.
Since then, the bags have been delivered on the first Tuesday of each month, and have been a great success, with a delivery of around 100 bags each month. The guild has received many letters of thanks from grateful patients, and every member of the guild and Guiding groups in the Burton area have been supportive, supplying it with items to put in the bags.
In normal situations, the Guides, Brownies and Rainbows help to pack the bags ready for delivery, but this has had to be suspended at the moment due to Covid-19.
They are now looking forward to restrictions being lifted so that they can meet again and restart the activity.
Janet Maxim, chairman of Burton Trefoil Guild, said: “The Covid-19 pandemic has thwarted us a little in the last few months, especially because people have not been going on holiday to donate to us their hotel toiletries, and we have not had our usual meetings where we would normally fund-raise in order to purchase the other items required.
“But we have kept going, and got them through to the wards via the volunteer coordinator.”
Anyone who is interested in sponsoring funding for the bags, or in joining the guild, should call 07745 879322.