Open Collective
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πŸ“£ 70 and counting: 🌈 Shout out to the people and organisations helping us make an impact πŸ™Œ
Published on May 20, 2020 by Jonathan

"It is through your hard work to find and recommission the devices and get them to us, we've been able to scale up, and help over 50 patients reconnect with their families, in some cases this will be the first time they are seeing and hearing each other in months" - Dr. Sameer Zaman, Imperial College NHS Trust

In just 7 weeks since starting out, you have helped to deliver 70 devices to 6 hospitals and a growing number of care and community services across London.

We couldn’t have done it without you. But the crisis is not over yet. We still need to reach people communities who are the most isolated and still need help to access vital services, family and friends.🌈

With the reduction of new COVID cases, demand from hospitals is easing off - which is good news. National programmes are now scaling up to serve the specific needs of intensive care settings. Attention is turning to recovery. Donated London Rainbow devices are in use in the treatment and recovery trial at Charing Cross Hospital in West London.

At the same time, we've been hearing from hospices, care homes and community support services who see a huge gap. Services are moving quickly to remote virtual support, visiting is still restricted, and so many people are left isolated because they aren't online. We've now provided 17 devices to St.Christopher's Hospice - these have been immediately put to use on the wards and sent to the homes of people who can't get online:

"Thank you, London Rainbow, for donating phones that are a real lifeline for patients! So far, a patient has reconnected with an estranged family member, a younger patient can now access online care and an asylum seeker has support they had no other way of accessing" - St.Christopher's Hospice staff

We can do more. We need more phones and especially tablets donated. Get your friends and family to get in touch and we'll make a plan to receive the device - use theΒ South London formΒ or theΒ West London form.

We couldn't have done any of this without you. A special thanks go out to everyone that is helping us have this impact:

πŸ“£ Grove Mutual Aid - a local South London group of neighbours who agreed to fund the first three SIM cards , currently in service at Lewisham Hospital.

πŸ“£ Pickwick Estates - an estate agent that has let us use their offices for donations of devices and deliveries. They've decorated their window to publicise our initiative.

πŸ“£ Giffgaff - the mobile network we tend to use - they provided 5 refurbished top spec phones and prepaid SIM cards for each one. These are now in use with patients at Princess Royal University Hospital.

...and each of our 41 contributors, many more who have donated old devices, and special thanks to those volunteering (17 and counting) to do the job of giving each device a full reset, enabling its use by those in need in London's hospitals right now.

Thanks all! πŸ™