King's College Hospital Charity - Annual Report & Accounts 2020-21 - Flipbook - Page 12
How did we do?
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As the year drew to a close, we turned our attention
to supporting our heroic NHS staff and vulnerable
patients amid the global COVID-19 pandemic.
King’s received their first COVID-19 positive
patient on 3 March 2020 and on 23 March 2020 we
launched the Hospital Heroes Appeal – our first
ever emergency appeal:
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Responding to COVID-19
We quickly responded to a huge public desire to
help hospital staff and COVID-19 patients and
provided a means for them to channel their
overwhelming generosity.
We devised an appeal that would offer immediate
practical and emotional support to staff, patients
and their families by providing food, clothing and
toiletries and electronic tablets to keep isolated
patients in touch with their loved ones.
K I N G’ S CO L L E G E H O S P I TA L C H A R I T Y A N N UA L R E P O R T A N D A CCO U N T S 2 01 9/ 2 0
We recognised that some families would require
ongoing support and started work on creating a
new bereavement service for those who would sadly
lose loved ones to COVID-19 and other conditions.
We rapidly changed our working practices to protect
our staff, especially those who were shielding,
those with caring responsibilities and parents who
were home-schooling their children. We worked
remotely from 11 March 2020 and had more regular
engagement with our Board of Trustees, updating
them on developments on a fortnightly basis.
Throughout this unprecedented period of change
our focus remained on the needs of NHS staff,
patients and families, our supporters and our staff.