Christmas Update

Even in these troublesome times there is room for good news and festive cheer. So here is our Christmas Newsletter outlining some of our successes, and what we have done to help in the last month.

Literally seconds before we were about to send this newsletter out, we learned that Rosie, nominated by Broni Lloyd-Edwards, has been accepted as a 2020 Hero and will appear in lights on Oxford Street over the week of 28th December! This is an amazing reflection, not just on her vision and the tireless work she has put in over the year, but also on all of you for your incredible dedication and contributions. You can all be very proud of your work at the Scrubbery.

From all of us here, we just want to take the time to thank everyone for their continued support and to wish you all the best possible Christmas. Let us hope that it is a chance to move into a New Year with confidence and positivity.

As a lovely surprise, Lesley made an amazing Christmas wreath from the Rainbow scrubs off-cuts and we have stuck that to our newsletter banner above!

Monthly Milestones

The Scrubbery has been busy cutting, sewing, compiling, packing and delivering the famous rainbow scrubs. The final numbers for delivery to the Royal Brompton were :
235 sets of scrubs,
50 rainbow headbands,
50 rainbow surgical scrub hats,
56 rainbow face masks.

We have been busy with a request for as many isolation gowns as we can spare for Selina Sufraz from the Park Clinic West Wimbledon, who also teaches at the Institute of Dentistry, Barts and The London Hospital. NHS dentists are struggling with the current regulations. They have communicated with us that they are concerned with the amount of plastic being generated by the usual plastic PPE, so we are making gowns for them. Upcycling linen that has been donated and is suitable for the purpose. Helping to reduce waste and recycle where we can.

Christmas Scrub hats for Save the Children fundraiser.

We were contacted by a team of dentists to see if we could help out so Rosie and her team have got that underway.

We have delivered 200 face masks to Carney’s Community, a fitness gym in Battersea, who help to get disadvantaged and excluded young people off the street and away from a life of crime and despair by giving them skills, discipline and self-respect.With nowhere else to go in lockdown, it will provide for those coming in and being around the premises, who might not otherwise have a mask to wear.

We have also delivered 100 masks to Regenerate Rise, a project which reaches the isolated elderly. Three hundred masks have gone to Age UK Wandsworth, with more on the way. Age UK will include these in aid parcels they are distributing with the help of local firemen. Who wouldn't like a treat delivered by a fireman at Christmas! As well as the masks we have made 125+ Christmas drawstring bags to distribute these goodies in.

Updates:

London Borough of Wandsworth Grant:
we have been tasked with making 1,300 masks for the vulnerable and disadvantaged in the Borough. We are well on our way to achieving this – but any more sewing machinists who want to help out, would be welcome.

West London Kidney Patients Association ordinarily fund Christmas decorations for 13 renal units, but this year that is not possible due to COVID-19 restrictions. We stepped in and matched a need and a wish – the staff needed scrubs, and we had some “festive” materials available to use. The outcome is a range of sensible but festive Christmas scrubs, matched with festive scrub hats and headbands. We used donated material to be more eco-friendly, sustainable, and reworked some unallocated scrubs to make them into festive sets. As well as the renal units, these sets have been distributed to other related services like the Live Kidney Donor team and the Renal Rapid Assessment team.

We have been in contact with Radio Jackie.com about the Scrubbery and they have been airing snapshots about us and will continue to do so for approximately 2 weeks – apart from getting the Scrubbery “out there” we are trying to swell the numbers of machinists available to work on all the items we deliver.

If you have any suggestions as to how to get the word out, and help increase machinist recruitment please do let us know. We are about to approach The Richmond and Twickenham Times to see if they would come and do an editorial on the Scrubbery – watch this space.

Northwick Park have asked for as many blue or maroon scrubs as we can make – which is always a challenge but with the delivery of 1400 metres of navy cloth we got the other day, we can start to make some inroads there. This consignment of cloth is sufficient for 2 lays, nearly 550 sets of scrubs.

The Royal Brompton has also asked for any scrubs we can provide in navy so it’s all systems go on blue scrubs and accessories!

Kings Rheumatology NHS Foundation Trust visited the Scrubbery to collect sets of scrubs that the team had made for them. Dr Deepak Nagra, Junior Clinical Fellow, came in, picked them up and had a tour of the facilities with Rosie. These scrubs are destined for the acute medicine and COVID-19 research trials team members working on new COVID vaccines.

The Scrubbery was also asked to make scrubs for the three Vaccine Clinics being set up in Wandsworth by Battersea Health Care and Wandsworth GP Federation. We will update you when we have more specifics on what is required there.

There has been a surge in demand from GP surgeries – opening new clinics such as diabetic clinics, where up to recently the GP’s were only doing telephone consults, but in reality they really need to do face to face consults, hence the spike in demand. We aim to fulfil the need wherever possible.

Political News :
We are grateful to Stephen Hammond, MP for Wimbledon – a past visitor and grateful for his ongoing support.

Some of you may have seen Fleur Anderson’s recent appearance on Question Time, where she brought up the subject of Scrubs provisioning and ongoing issues. We are indebted to her for that, and for highlighting our cause on National TV as well as political arenas.

COVID-19 NAO Report on Government Procurement Debated on 9th December in Parliament.
Our friend and ally in Westminster - Fleur Anderson - was one of many MPs who have been sharing and voicing our concerns around the allocation and mismanagement of the procurement system to date. The aim being to get this properly discussed in Parliament and to act on the important lessons learned. The above report when it was released was damning about the procurement processes, and highlighted the failures and mismanagement of the process for procurement contracts. Why were millions of pounds wasted on contracts with organisations with no background in PPE? Many contracts were awarded without any kind of financial due diligence being undertaken on the companies involved. One of the items Fleur pointed out in her contribution to this discussion, was that we need the Minister to go back to the Department of Health, and sort out the national scrubs crisis as this has not been addressed in this National Audit Office report.

Outside of this one debate, Rosie has asked for Fleur’s help in taking this further and to raise the valid concerns around procurement. Fleur has written to the Health Secretary to raise this difficult subject and to propose a meeting with Michael Brodie the CEO with responsibility for the NHS Supply Chain. We await the response.

Donations and Thank Yous :
We need to say a special thank you to Chris Evans and his son Noah. Noah slept in a tent for a month, and Chris who is a DJ, put an appeal on air, to collect money to buy special material for the crisis. The result of their incredible efforts and support, meant we received rolls and rolls of the rainbow material kindly donated by them both – the first batch of scrubs made from it going to the Royal Brompton Hospital.

We had an unexpected and generous gift of a sizeable quantity of washing liquid from the International Fragrance Federation – which is very useful for washing all donated material / bedlinen before it is put into use.

We have been doing a lot of fabric upcycling - donated pillowcases for example which we can’t use elsewhere have been converted into bags for food banks. We passed on multitudes of them and have received good feedback – they are proving very popular as they can also be reused for gym clothing/ washing bags/ shopping bags etc.

Rosie wanted to say a big Thank You to all of you for all your generous gifts, cards, flowers, cake, and presents brought in for her recent birthday. She was delighted, if not a little bit overwhelmed by them all – a total and lovely surprise.

Welcome
Finally, we need to mention our sister organisation – the Hammersmith “For the Love of Scrubs” team who have joined us in Roehampton – we are delighted to amalgamate them into our merry band.