Tower and Town, August 2015

  (view the full edition)

Volunteering At Savernake Hospital

The Friends of Savernake Hospital and the Community is a charity supporting individuals and organisations involved in healthcare both at Savernake Hospital and the wider community. It aims to enhance the quality of life of those affected by ill health and or disability, and to support their care and well-being.

We meet bi-monthly to consider health-related grant applications. Recent grant applications included a portable ECG machine for the community nurses use at home visits, new wheel chairs and dementia aids for patients on Ailesbury Ward, physiotherapy equipment for the Savernake Hospital Falls Clinic, a grant to the Jubilee Centre and another to Cotswold House (the eating disorder unit at Savernake Hospital) for patient-led craft and gardening initiatives.

Probably the most high-profile financial support given in recent months has been the £20,000 matched funding pledge we gave to the ‘Prospect at Savernake Appeal’. Our Chair, Janet Louth, was involved in various profile-raising photographs and interviews both for newspapers and local radio. This was supported by our mascot on Facebook ‘Where’s Matron?’. As a result Prospect well and truly smashed their appeal target and have publicly acknowledged that this was in no small part due to our efforts to get the local community to rally behind them.

Behind Janet and the committee there is a large group of volunteers who run the Savernake Hospital Shop, conducting a daily trolley run to Ailesbury Ward. All Shop profits go back into the work of the Friends. We also collect snippets of fascinating local history relating to Savernake Hospital: In the foyer now stands a musical collecting cottage, donated by Dr and Mrs Nick Maurice, and made by Jack Spratt, the Clockmaker of Wootton Rivers who was a patient at the hospital. On our website are recorded memories of former patients and staff at Savernake Hospital – “some amusing, some sad, and all thought provoking,” says Janet.

When asked about her hopes for the future, Janet is quite direct: “We must be ever changing, just as healthcare is. Most importantly I would like extra committee members to provide new ideas and manpower to help us continue the proud work of the Friends – to support healthcare at Savernake Hospital and in the local community, with common sense and compassion.”

Trudi Granger