Blog
•
12/03/2021

Update
on
our
ICU
gift
baskets
appeal

Members of Portswood Church raised a fantastic £1,350 to provide gift baskets and cards with messages of heart felt thanks to all of the staff at Southampton General ICU department.

  
A team of Mel, Sarah, Paula, Jackie M and Helen met up Friday afternoon at the church (socially distanced of course) to complete the baskets making a total of 201 beautiful gifts basket.  Each basket contained a pair of bamboo socks and either a pot of 'working hands' hand cream of 'working feet' foot cream.  
 
We have to say a big thank you to Mel for coming up with the idea and sourcing all of the hand creams, foot creams and socks; also to Mel's aunt Linda who made all of the baskets and a great number of the cards by hand for us.
 
Finally thank you also to Helen, Sarah, Wendy, Paula and Rosemary for writing most of these cards for us and thank you to all of those who either sent in their own cards or words of appreciation to be written into cards on their behalf.  It has been a great team effort!
 
They were delivered to Friends of the General on Tuesday 23rd March to bless our ICU.  There was enough money left over to pay for a new fridge and freezer for the ICU Staff for which they were very thankful.
 
Here is the response from the charity and some of the recipients:

"Please pass on our huge thanks to everyone that was involved in putting these together for the staff on GICU. Erin Boatswain the Matron for critical care emailed this morning to pass on her thanks she said “staff have really appreciated the goodies from Portswood Church, things are really busy on GICU still so it is great to get the boost!”. The smiles I saw from the staff was lovey"

"On behalf of all the people who are too busy right now to say thank you – thank you! I mean, of course, the doctors, the nurses, the cleaners and the porters – in fact, every one of our NHS heroes at University Hospital Southampton. I know if they possibly could, they would want to thank you personally for your generous donation of the fantastic goody bags you have provided to the staff on GICU. Frontline NHS staff have already worked tirelessly through two waves of the virus. Thanks to you, staff can now rest properly during their short breaks, access wellbeing areas and enjoy refreshments such as tea, coffee and fresh hot food – it makes such a difference knowing they have the support of the local community. Thank you again for your support. Beth Hall, Joint Interim Charity Director."

"I am a nurse on the ITU at Southampton General Hospital and just wanted to say thank you for the kind gift of socks and hand cream I received from your church community. People have obviously gone to a lot of trouble and I just wanted to assure you that gifts such as yours really make a difference to staff morale and make us feel appreciated."