Mail Force helps heroes keep on helping families
THEY have given thousands of families a place to rest, eat and relax during the most traumatic periods of their lives.
Now staff at Ronald McDonald House in Glasgow can continue their good work thanks to a vital boost from the Mail Force charity.
The delivery of 1,500 face masks follows a two-month struggle by the charity to acquire the huge amounts of personal protective equipment (PPE) needed for both staff and residents.
The organisation was set up in 1989 and houses the families of patients being treated in hospital.
It moved to its current site in the grounds of the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital five years ago.
The facility, which houses up to 31 people, is open seven days a week, with staff working shifts day and night.
Since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, it has been running at 50 per cent capacity and providing the same service with a skeleton staff. Workers have also had to cut a number of fundraising events that usually help to generate the £500,000 needed each year to keep its doors open.
Collecting the first box of PPE yesterday, house manager Tara Harvey thanked the Mail Force fund.
She said ‘Having stocks of PPE guarantees that we stay open, and it’s important that we are still here and able to provide the constant support that we always have to the families that need us.
‘To be given this many masks is phenomenal. We are so grateful. It means residents who come through our door can feel protected and the staff can continue to look after them.
‘The people coming here have enough worries, so if us being here provides some stability among the chaos of what is happening in their lives then that’s wonderful.
‘All of the PPE is sold out everywhere. At the beginning of the lockdown we simply couldn’t source enough and it was being sold in many places at inflated prices.
‘Our fundraising arm has been cut off as we have had to cancel community events because of social distancing, so this Mail Force donation is absolutely incredible.’
House administrator Laura Skelly, 30, and assistant house manager Jennifer Walker, 37, tested the masks following the special delivery, one of a string made by the Mail Force charity around the UK.
Each Thursday at 8pm, the selfless staff at Ronald McDonald House take part in the UKwide Clap for Carers event and have also decorated the windows of the building with messages of support for the doctors, nurses and other workers at the 1,677-bed hospital across the car park from their own.
Mail Force was set up amid the PPE crisis to source equipment such as face masks, aprons and coveralls.
Last week the charity delivered 25,000 boxes of PPE to the NHS Distribution Centre in Larkhall, Lanarkshire, the second consignment of its kind in as many months, with equipment destined to help staff at Scotland’s 51 hospitals.
So far, thanks to tens of thousands of donations from Daily Mail readers, the Mail Force fund stands at more than £8.6million.