3 minute read
A message from our CEO
This has been an incredibly challenging year for the NHS – perhaps the toughest it has ever faced. The onset of the global pandemic has led to intense pressure on hospital services over the last 12 months, extremes which seemed unimaginable at the beginning of the year.
The staff and patients at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust have found themselves in the eye of the storm. Across its five north west London hospitals, the Trust cared for over 5,000 patients with Covid-19 during 2020/21 and, despite the most extraordinarily difficult circumstances, helped the vast majority of those patients recover and return home. Our thoughts remain with all those who have suffered the pain of losing loved ones to this terrible virus - in particular, the families and friends of staff working at the Trust's hospitals who sadly lost their lives in service to their community.
Throughout this momentous year, we at Imperial Health Charity have occupied a unique position to make a real difference at a time of national crisis and I’m extremely proud of the vital supporting role that we’ve played. As the Trust’s dedicated charity, we made radical changes to our normal ways of working so that we could translate the remarkable outpouring of public generosity and goodwill into essential emergency support when it was needed most. During the year, more than £3 million raised by our emergency fundraising appeal was committed to support a combination of urgent crisis response activities and longterm recovery and improvement initiatives. The beneficiaries of these efforts have been the most vulnerable patients and their families, who have faced the most unimaginably distressing experiences during this pandemic, and our tireless hospital staff whose compassionate instinct to keep caring will be the abiding memory of this time.
We are indebted of course to the thousands of generous donors and fundraisers who put others before themselves at a time of great uncertainty to support this vital work, and we also benefited from a portion of the funds raised nationally by NHS Charities Together in response to the pandemic. In all my years working in the charity sector, I’ve never known such a response to a fundraising appeal and I’m incredibly grateful to everyone who dug deep to help us raise vital funds. I would also like to pay tribute to the remarkable team of volunteers who stepped forward to help us deliver our emergency response operation. More than 580 volunteers helped our hospitals over the course of the year – delivering urgent supplies to front-line staff and countless other important tasks. Theirs was a truly herculean contribution and I’m thankful to each and every volunteer who donated their time to help us this year.
Like thousands of charities across the country, we had to adapt rapidly in order to continue providing effective support for our beneficiaries under the unprecedented conditions of lockdown. The majority of our staff were asked to work remotely during the year, with satellite teams based at hospital offices to co-ordinate volunteering activities. Despite this upheaval of routine, I’m grateful to all our staff for their willingness, good humour and unwavering commitment to the cause.
As we head into the final year of our organisational strategy, the climate for fundraising has changed dramatically and we are in no doubt that conditions will continue to be challenging over the next 12 months and beyond. However, the charity remains in a stable financial position and we stand ready to help our hospitals do more as they continue to recoverfrom the impact of the pandemic.
Ian Lush OBE Chief Executive, Imperial Health Charity
