January 2023 News
Welcome to 2023 and the third anniversary of the Scrubbery. We have a lot to celebrate. Later in this newsletter we will look at many of these achievements. We had planned to have a celebratory morning tea later this month, but we took a decision to cancel when we had insufficient attendees. While this may be disappointing for some, it would have been even more unfortunate to have a huge mismatch between people, cake and tea!
The Scrubbery Statistics Corner
In raw numbers here are some of the amazing accomplishments of the Scrubbery team.
Delivered Items
22,241 Scrub garments
7,017 Scrub Hats
4,631 Laundry Bags
11,246 Facemasks *
2,103 Wellbeing Bags
1,672 Headbands *
731 Mask Adaptors
13 Drain Bags
70 Adult Hospital Gowns
30 Tabards for children's vaccination centres
110 Trauma Teddies
338 Scrunchies *
101 Premature Baby Hats
118 Dress/Tunics
49 Lab Coats
243 Children's Pyjamas
7 (Huge) Camouflage nets
120 Children's Hospital Gowns
56 Sleep Masks
48,793 items in total
£484,000 approximate value
* Note that Headband, Facemask and Scrunchy counts do not include these items when they are included in Wellbeing Bags and so these numbers are less than the actual number delivered.
A great number of these items have been made from upcycled fabric, saving it from landfill. In the case of scrub hats each hat saves 52-60 disposable hats.
The most recent consignment of scrubs arriving in Ukraine
The Scrubbery Awards Shelf
The Scrubbery, and Rosie on behalf of the Scrubbery, have received a number of awards as well as numerous favourable write-ups in various newspapers and magazines. The main awards have been:
UK Point of Light Award from the Prime Minister's Office
Wandsworth Civic Award and Community Hero of 2020
Singer Sewing Machines Sewing Hero
Selected to be a Commonwealth Games Baton Bearer
Wandsworth Mayor's Pin Badge and Roll of Honour for a significant contribution during Covid-19 pandemic
2020 Hero, with Rosie's name in lights on Oxford Street
BBC London Make a Difference Hero, nominated by Wandsworth Council
The Scrubbery Recipient Roll Call
It is unfeasible to list all the individuals and organisations that the Scrubbery has provided items to.
What we can say is that we have supplied items to every London hospital trust and many others across the country.
We have supplied hundreds of volunteers at vaccination centres with the rainbow scrubs that you have seen all over the press.
We assist 70 GP practices and their associated care homes, as well as various other community groups and organisations such as Age UK, Carney's Gym, Little Village, Foodbank, Roehampton Community Box, Regenerate Rise, Regenerate and Glass Door.
As well as all of the local hospitals and healthcare providers we have also delivered items to meet emergency requests, including:
Afghan Refugees via the Little Village charity
We sent 788 scrub garments and 350 scrub hats via the Royal Navy after the volcano eruption in St Vincent and the Grenadines
Most recently our ongoing efforts to help in Ukraine continue with scrubs, camouflage nets and several truckloads of more general aid items, all shipped securely via our contacts in Lviv, courtesy of the tireless Olga.
People in Ukraine receiving some of the items donated via the Scrubbery collection
The Scrubbery Intangible Zone
In fact, while this is an impressive list of statistics and awards it is the way that the Scrubbery has provided a community, help network and focus for so many people that has been most rewarding. Especially at the outset of the pandemic, when so much was unknown and worrying, we were able to give people a sense of purpose and allow them to help healthcare workers in tangible ways. This was not just sewing scrubs, we had retired taxi drivers collecting and delivering scrubs, volunteer riders shuttling scrubs all across the country, as well as all the people helping in other ways at the Scrubbery.
It has been the sum of all these myriad little contributions that has added up to such a significant achievement. In adversity each small step by each individual has helped so many people, as well as improving and sustaining the volunteers wellbeing.
Recent News
More well being bags were sent this month on to East Surrey Hospital, sedation and special care dentistry in Redhill. This group of people were redeployed because of their skills onto COVID wards, and have remained unrecognised for their contributions.
Scrub hat samples have been requested by the Royal London Hospital, so a selection of samples has been sent across and we await their feedback and particular selection once they have all been trialled.
Whipps Cross Hospital has also had some scrub hats delivered for trialling.
We have a new lay in progress, which if you have managed to get into the Hub you will have seen on the table. Rosie got a bit carried away and it is the most ambitious number of layers, at 131, that we have attempted. It has proved very mettlesome, wayward and slithery, and the cutter (and the cutter operator) haven't liked it, but triumphed in the end.
We are making scrub sets for Ukraine out of ends of rolls and spare material on the shelves. If you can spare some time to help out with assembling kits etc please get in touch. Rosie did one lay over Christmas and this is the second recent lay for Ukraine in vibrant colours which we hope will send some cheer.
Fundraising by Jos Sampson
We have to pass on huge congratulations to Jos for a very successful art sale. Merrivale Prints held a special sale with all proceeds going to the Ukrainian cause. The money raised has been carefully assigned to purchase very specific equipment and supplies. Over £1900 was raised and of that £1600 has been spent on this equipment – sutures, medical aspirators, surgical table covers, surgical instruments and accessories. Selecting what to send was a very involved process, taking advice from experts around the world. We looked at generators, night sights for rifles, sutures and medical instruments before making the selections.
As a postscript all the goods have now also been delivered - so I am sure it will be much appreciated and a fantastic effort Jos!
Some of the medical equipment arriving at its destination in Ukraine with grateful recipients
Excess PPE
Many of you will have read in the press abut the £10bn of PPE that the government is writing off because it was either unusable, above market price, or was not delivered. The BMJ notes "the Department of Health and Social Care’s annual report and accounts1 for 2020-21, show that £8.7bn worth of PPE purchased early in the pandemic was written off. This included £673m for defective PPE not suitable for any use, £2.6bn for items not suitable for NHS use that may be suitable for other uses, £4.7bn from paying inflated prices because of global demand, and £750m for “excess” inventory that passed its expiry date and is held for resale or donation.
The department also purchased an additional £1.2bn of PPE that had not been delivered as of 31 March 2021, but which it was committed to buying, the accounts show.
[Gareth Davies, head of the National Audit Office] said the DHSC had failed to maintain adequate records of the location or condition of £3.6bn worth of stock that was unaccounted for. While officials believe the department held 7.5 billion items in 16,000 containers at UK ports and a further 1.6 billion in storage in China."
With this in mind Rosie met with Fleur Anderson in her MP Surgery to see if we could make an inventory of what PPE is being held, and where it is being held and to discover if any of this could be redeployed to Ukraine instead of storing it indefinitely at great cost, or incinerating it.
This month we are looking for CRUTCHES, if you have any spare crutches please bring them into the Oasis Academy where we are collecting them. If you have a pair of crutches please tie them together. These will go to a hospital and a rehabilitation centre in Lviv where they have run out of crutches. Many of you may have crutches in a cupboard because the hospitals here can't accept them back after use.
We would welcome new volunteers to get all our ongoing projects over the line and to spread the load. If you know anyone who might be interested, just bring them in to meet Rosie and the team and let’s see what happens – they don’t have to be master craftspeople – we all have skills that can be extremely useful at the Hub.
We are also looking for volunteers to assist with 1:1 reading with the primary school children and also to help setup the new library at the School. Please contact us if you can help.
DBS checking at the Academy is back up and running again – so if you have not done it already or couldn’t apply before Christmas do please initiate the process again. If you need more info just ask.