Feed the Front Line - Royal Free Hospital Covid Medical Staff Meals and Support Appeal

We need your help! Food and wellbeing supplies are urgently needed to support Royal Free Hospital staff working incredibly long hours in this time of crisis.

The Need

Your donation will help staff working on the frontline of this pandemic. From doctors on Covid wards to nurses in ITU, we’re working directly with the hospital trust and the Royal Free charity to ensure provisions are delivered directly to the areas in greatest need.

Hospital staff are working extremely hard in this most difficult of times, caring for our loved ones under extremely challenging circumstances. Staff wellbeing is being severely impacted, and the NHS is unfortunately not able to provide sufficient facilities and support services to meet the current needs.

An example of this is meals – queues at the staff canteen are often too long for doctors and nurses under acute time pressure, so they sometimes miss meals and go hungry. This impacts their wellbeing and consequently the care that they can provide to their patients.

We urgently need more donations to continue providing nutritious meals and other forms of support to those on the frontline of this crisis.

We have so far provided over 6,500 hot meals since we began a little over three weeks ago, as well as countless other items which have contributed to making their lives easier and boosting morale.

The Appeal

We are a group of local families who, are working with doctors on the Covid medical team wards. We are appealing for your help. We’ve committed thousands of pounds already, but we need your help to continue providing this support to staff at the Royal Free Hospital. Our goal is to raise £50,000 to provide food and wellbeing supplies during this difficult time, and we will be working with the trust and charity to ensure these provisions are delivered where the need is greatest.

What Will Our Money Be Used For?

Getting hundreds of hot meals direct to staff is not something the NHS can do alone, so they are incredibly grateful for the support of the local community. Your donation would help to provide:

- Getting hundreds of hot meals direct to staff is not something the NHS can do alone, so they are incredibly grateful for the support of the local community. Your donation would help to provide:

- Daily hot lunches and dinners. Arrangements as far as possible are being made with local restaurants for the provision of meals. This helps exhausted and time-poor hospital staff, whilst also helping local restaurants during a time of unprecedented crisis in the hospitality sector.

- We have an incredible new initiative that is starting this week. We have formed a partnership with Liberty Kitchen. Liberty Kitchen is a not for profit street food social enterprise that works with prisoners and ex-prisoners from Pentonville prison. Liberty Kitchen has been severely affected by covid. Their access to the mess at Pentonville has been stopped due to the pandemic. They have secured a kitchen in East London for this project and will be providing the Royal Free 100 – 150 hot meals 2-3 times a week for the next month.

- Additional supplies including drinks, ready meals, snacks, coffee, tea, pastries.

- Please donate whatever you can. All funds raised will go directly to the provision of food and well-being items for support hospital staff on the frontline of this pandemic.

Please feel free to contact any of us if you have questions.

Recent quotations:

From a senior registrar:

“A big thank you to the kindness from the community .. as long shifts and real intense patient care makes us very fatigued, just knowing there will be hot nutritious meal readily available for a break makes the whole shift less challenging. We struggled a lot last wave but this time morale is higher because of your support and kindness. There isn’t time to queue for average canteen food and after 11 hours in PPE under stressful conditions seeing patients rapidly deteriorate, the meals in the hub allow some quality downtime and not just another major challenge for our difficult shifts a BIG BIG thank you for backing the front line in our most desperate time.”

From a junior doctor:

"Many of us have been redeployed during the first wave and second, working in COVID wards working hard and putting our lives at risk. Receiving a delicious hot meal has left every one of us truly touched by the generosity and kindness people had. It’s also very lovely to see people hang out together for lunches which usually does not happen in normal times. Many thanks for everything you have given it is something we all appreciate very much.”

If you would prefer to donate items rather than cash then please send fruit, energy bars, Diet Coke, crisps and capsules for nespresso machines (they don’t have to be nespresso... Amazon own brand or others that may be cheaper). For drop-offs please contact Amanda on 07973659640 or amandajrudman@googlemail.com.

Please feel free to contact any of us if you have questions.

FeedTheFrontLineRF@gmail.com will reach each of the people below.

Amanda Rudman – Amandajrudman@gmail.com

Dominic Shorthouse – Dominic@engcap.com

Dr Sonia Li - Soniali@gmail.com

Kon Asimacopoulos - Konaaa@gmail.com