Last week I discovered a real and practical example of the first line of the NHS Constitution “The NHS belongs to the people”. It was in Shropshire!
A wonderful partnership of the Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic Hospital and the League of Friends…
On the face of it, one might be forgiven for thinking, “How nice”, “How quaint”, “How old-fashioned”, and as soon as you enter the hospital, you are struck with exactly these sentiments. The community of Friends volunteers, in their pink polo-shirts are everywhere, providing the unsuspecting visitor with a nice and quaint welcome, with old-fashioned community values embedded into the entrance and all the way down the corridor!
On the left there are Friends at the Help Desk, and on the right the Friends Café serves very reasonably priced drinks and cake.
Wandering on, passing more smiling folks in pink polo-shirts, you discover the shop and the post-office, both run by the League of Friends.
…and that it apparently the tip of the iceberg. The Friends also provide services to patients including trolley services to the wards, the disabled swimming club, a spinal patient feeding scheme, veterans orthopaedic emotional support, patients’ library and flower arranging. In the wider community, the Friends have a network of fund-raising branches, based in the town and villages of Shropshire, Mid and North Wales (Bala, Chirk & Weston Rhyn, Corwen, Llanfair Caereinion, Llangollen, Ludlow, Newtown, Oswestry, Shrewsbury, Tanat Valley, Welshpool and Whitchurch).
If you ask as I did, “So what do the hospital-managed volunteers do?”, you will get a sort of blank/quizzical look that I got. After a bit of chatting, it transpired that the hospital had always had a strong sense of community ownership. The response to the fire of 1948, which destroyed or severely damaged half of the hospital, typified this, and within days, an appeal was launched by local newspaper publisher the Caxton Press, and due to massive public support, £45,000 was raised within a year (£2.3m in today’s money). It was these community fundraisers who came together to create the League of Friends, which was formed in the 1960s.
So the answer to my question is something like: “There aren’t any hospital-managed volunteers, the hospital has an agreement with the League of Friends to recruit and support all the volunteers”.
That’s sort of it really, somehow the community and the hospital have become one and the same. I’ve spoken to a few RHAJ patients since and they all say how welcome they feel the minute the set foot in the entrance. A wonderful example that demonstrates the NHS belongs to the people!
Btw, there’s currently a 10-year review of the NHS Constitution. Here’s hoping the first line remains front and centre!