On Christmas Eve we delivered wrapped presents to every patient unfortunate enough to be in Southampton General Hospital over Christmas. Volunteers come in at teatime and go to every ward and personally hand the patient a present.
Paients in the Geriatric Wards, 1-5 on G level, have presents left under the Christmas Tree in each ward for them to receive them when they are awake.
In the Princess Anne Hospital a doctor played Father Christmas on Christmas morning in place of Jack Edwards, who sadly died last April and had acted as Father Christmas for the League for over 10 years. We give baby presents to all babies and wrapped presents for all other patients.
This is a tradition that dates back into the archives of the League of Friends and is very much appreciated by all the patients, some of whom have no or very few visitors to their bedsides.
The children in the General Hospital are the recipients of very many presents from various charities over the city and of course Southampton Football Club First Team and Manager, George Burley, visit with their sleigh full of presents for them. A very exciting afternoon for the sick children and an exciting spectacle for many other visitors to the hospital.
After a lovely holiday in Madeira where the sun shone all the time I returned to rain rain rain and then fog and frost. What a wake-up call.
Friends have been busy wrapping 700 Christmas gifts for all the Adult In-Patients on Christmas Day and 120 gifts for the Elderly In-patients and about 20 Gifts for the Newborns. A mammoth task alongside greatly increased sales in the shop and very busy Tea Bars as patients are seen before the Christmas break.
We have teams of volunteers giving out the 700 presents to the Adults on Christmas Eve. The Elderly have their gifts put under the tree in each ward and a Doctor plays Father Christmas in the PAH and gives out their presents on Christmas Day.
Thank you to all the teams who make this possible each year. Much work behind the scenes enables this to take place over the Christmas Break to delight and surprise all the In-patients.
We do not do anything for the Childrens' wards as they always receive a lot of gifts from various charities and other ventures from all over the area, including lovely gifts given personally to the children from the entire Saints team including George Burley this year. A really exciting event for the sick children.
We also gave the Elderly wards 20 tv/dvd players so that they may watch dvd films. The money for this was gifted to us by a lady whose Mother had been an In-patient on G level for a number of weeks. She felt that they should be able to watch dvds as they are unable to have Patientline television on that level in the hospital and the FriendsSGH had to have all our tvs removed as part of the Patientline lease.
We hope that they will enjoy watching films as and when they wish. A library of dvds is already available and we will try to collect a lot more so that the Elderly have a great choice of viewing at their leisure.
We have now been given the building timetable for the F level Refreshment Area and it will not be handed over to us until the end of July07. Very disappointing for us but as usual we will grin and carry on D level until then.
The long service awards took place in the Chapel on 5th December with the Mayor and Mayoress of Southampton and the Chairman of the Trust, Mr Richard Keightley CB, handing the badges and citations to the many volunteers who have completed between 5-20 years service.
This year Reg Lowman, who completed 27 years as Chairman of the League of Friends and has been President for 3 year since standing down as Chairman, completed a staggering 50 years as a volunteer for the FriendsSGH. 50 years of volunteering. what an amazing feat. He was presented with an inscribed crystal decanter by the Trust Chairman and congratulated by the Mayor.
We are going to do a small buffet later in the Spring for our own celebration of his Golden Award.
Happy Christmas to all our Volunteers and to you all.
Meetings with the Finance Director about the possibility of the Trust appointing a new Professional Fund-Raiser to
make the best possible use of future charitable giving to our General Hospital.
This was viewed with caution by the heads of the charities at the meeting. We are all of a similar view that it may well "water-down" the amounts we raise for our existing charities. Assurances were given but I must admit it gives a cause for worry. The charitable pot is a fairly finite amount and although we, as a League, do not have a great amount of donations given, maybe this will dry up altogether as a bigger charity emerges. FriendsSGH earn a very high percentage of the money we use to help the hospital. We use the shop and Tea Bars to make profits to gift to the hospital but that said, we do get some donations and would be upset to find that they fail to materialise in the future. Today, Friday 3rd November , the Ladies from Oncology Tea Bar and I attended the 1st birthday of Macmillan Garden Room. We were then given a guided tour of the brand new Oncology centre and the wonderful new Treatment centre. The new machines are state of the art and in some cases the first in this country and even first worldwide.
It makes one very proud to be part of this wonderful new hospital. So many things are really exemplary about the General and I suppose we must remember that when worrying about our small areas!!
Sunday 30th October06
The Friends had a very interesting meeting with Keith Dowell and Mark Maffey from the Trust outlining the future for E and F levels West Wing at the SGH.
F level is the area that we are expanding with the Trust to provide a new modern Refreshment area that will replace D & F level Tea bars that we run at present.
We will be taking over two doctors offices that are next door to our present F level Tea bar and completely refurbish the whole area with funds from the Trust and more than £50,000 of our money.
We asked about how secure we would be if we do invest this money and agreed with Keith Dowell that we would make an agreement, kind of quasi lease, that would ensure that if the Trust needs to move us again in the future they would foot the bill and try to find us a comparable site.
This is the best outcome that we can expect from the Trust and we are raring to go now to get this refreshment area up and running early in the New Year.
We will be running it as part of the Trust and therefore are looking at plans together with Mark Maffey, an architect with the Trust, to satisfy both of our requirements. This is a new venture for the Trust and us together. Before we have had a space in the hospital and run it as League of Friends and made profits for the Trust. This new venture will be a refreshment area that the Trust wants as part of its new Out Patient Departments on E and F level West Wing and are willing to fund it with us as a joint concern.
Very exciting and we hope this is the start of a new era for FriendsSGH and the Trust working together for the General Hospital.
The closing of the PAH shop and Tea Bar is still a sad and upsetting concern but we must look ahead now and we feel that the Trust haven’t just “chucked us out” but have offered a new venture, that we couldn’t afford to do without their help, to move everyone on to a new year and a new us!
Many older volunteers of the League feel that we are moving away from the “old” League and we are. But we are gaining new volunteers who have different aspects on volunteering and a different view of how the FriendsSGH should progress. This is exciting and we need to grasp the opportunities offered with both hands.
We are awaiting our new website that is being built for us and we can’t wait to get going with it. More news of that next time.
Sallyanne
The Friends held their AGM on Wednesday at midday. Very few turned up but we did have an interesting meeting.
The day started SO badly for Margaret, (Hon: Secretary) and I. We had to re-do the Agenda at 10am and Margaret’s printer wouldn’t print, so she emailed it to me and then my printer told me that I had a paper jam! I opened it up…nothing jammed. Unplugged it and tried again….can’t print because of a paper jam.
Just one of those days?
We eventually did manage to print a copy and put it in the photocopier, only to have it chewed up in the feeder.
Luckily the printer then worked fine and we did manage to photocopy enough copies to take to the meeting.
We thanked Reg Lowman MBE for his 27 years as Chairman and the 3 years he has been President, he will now be a Vice President for life.
We welcomed Dr Rodger Sleet as our New President. A position he held for 2 years until he stepped aside for Reg Lowman to be President when he retired as Chairman in 2003.
During this manic time I had a phone call from a secretary in the Princess Anne Hospital asking how the Friends could possibly close the shop and Tea bar there.
She said that a Minuted meeting of the Friends Committee had decided to withdraw from the PAH because we weren’t taken enough money over there.
I told her that it wasn’t true but she assured me that a senior member of the Trust had told a meeting in the PAH that this was what had happened.
It is really very unfortunate that these stories seem to have a life of their own, once started.
We were asked to vacate the two areas in the PAH to make way for new areas needed by the Trust. As a League we have no security of tenure in the hospitals but having been operating for over 53 years we believe that we “belong” in the hospitals.
We trust the SUHT to be fair to us and we try to be amiable and flexible in our outlook and “help” the Trust as well as the patients and staff in both hospitals.
We do understand the upset this has caused to our volunteers, who do hate change of any sort, but we must regroup and show that we can change and benefit from the experience.
So here we are facing new challenges with a good strong committee to lead us and we hope that, when our new refreshment area opens early 2007 on F level in the SGH, we can welcome all our old friends and new ones to our new look area.
Another week in the SGH, another set of problems but many laughs and smiles too.
Hello, my name is Sallyanne Hurst and I am Chairman of the Friends of Southampton General Hospital. I was born and educated in Winchester followed by Southampton University Department of Aeronautics. I lived in Bridport for 2 years, followed by 20 years in Seaton, Devon before returning to Southampton in 1999. When I went up to the General Hospital to see what the League of Friends did, as I thought that it would help me make new friends and pass a bit of time!!! The rest is history, as they say.
I would like to bring you a weekly diary of what we do and don’t do as Volunteering as Friends at the “General”.
We have our AGM on 11th October and hope to attract more than the regular few. It is a shame that we have a rather “aged” image BUT we are actually trying very hard to propel ourselves into a much more modern era.
I won a website with a fantastic local firm through the pages of the Echo and we are putting it together as I write. Its going to be very cutting edge and modern and I do hope that it will attract lively would-be Volunteers, Donors and interested people who might just be able to help us help the “General”.
We are sadly having to give up our Areas (Shop and Coffee Bar) in the PRINCESS ANNE HOSPITAL and also our D level Coffee Bar in the GENERAL HOSPITAL because of the Trust’s new plans. It is a very sad time BUT we are also being given the chance to extend our F level Coffee Bar and have really great ideas to make it modern and welcoming to new patients, their visitors and to the Staff.
I do hope that I have interested you and that you might like to re-visit my weekly blog and maybe give me feedback and any ideas that you may have that would help us or would help the hospital in ways that may not have occurred to us as Friends.
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