LEIGHTON Park school has teamed up with the ScrubHub to provide PPE for the NHS.
Having already provided more than 19,000 face masks to the NHS, with the help of ScrubHub, the school has now been able to provide fabric for 250 sets of scrubs for NHS workers.
Natasha Coccia, director of outreach and partnerships at Leighton Park, said: “I am truly delighted that Leighton Park is continuing to build meaningful relationships with new partners such as ScrubHub.
“In the early stages of social distancing due to the pandemic, we thought it would be hard to forge any new relationships during this time-this couldn’t be further from the truth. Partnership working is stronger than ever locally, nationally, globally.
“It is a privilege to support the PPE campaigns of other organisations through fundraising and material supplies, while continuing to provide visors for frontline workers from our own workshop on the Park.
“We just want to help in any way we can.”
The ScrubHub is a national organisation with 118 groups sewing scrubs across England. The group local to Leighton Park is the South Oxfordshire and Berkshire ScrubHub run by Tina Hancock and Madeleine Steele, who were inspired by the activities of the original ScrubHub in Hackney Wick which they found on social media.
With Ms Hancock in charge of scrub orders and communications, Ms Steele is overseeing the procurement of material, sewers and keeping quality control on target. The duo have quickly attracted enthusiastic sewers to support the cause.
Ms Hancock said: “We now have around 50 volunteers who have their own overlockers and are confident using them.
“But we have lots more people who have standard sewing machines and who are keen to get involved. They are focusing on making up scrub bags and masks.”
The scrubs are being provided to individual NHS workers in need within Woodley, Earley, Winnersh, Wokingham, Tilehurst, Reading, Caversham, Abingdon, Didcot, Wallingford and Henley.
“We’ve had requests from healthcare workers as far away as Oxford in one direction and Wexham Park in another,” added Tina.
“We’ve had orders from Royal Berkshire Hospital, John Radcliffe and Frimley Park Hospital including an order from a trainee nurse who needed scrubs in a different colour so that her colleagues could easily identify her qualification level yet without being able to see her through all the PPE.
“There was a doctor working in Newbury who called on a Friday because he was due to start work on a covid ward on the Monday so we managed to get him some scrubs over the weekend.”
Mark Smith, founder of the face shields initiative at Leighton Park School, said: “We are delighted that, due to the overwhelming generosity of donors to our GoFundMe page, not only have we been able to purchase enough materialto successfully fulfil the incredible demand for thousands of face shields in our local area, we have also been able to support kindred PPE initiatives, such as the amazing ScrubHub group.”
Anyone wanting to help make scrubs is advised to contact Scrub-hub South Oxon and Berks on Facebook. n To donate, visit: www.gofundme.com/f/scrubhubsouthoxonandberks
And anyone who needs face shields for staff in their organisation should email faceshields@leightonpark.com
