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Working in Partnership
Plymouth Hospitals Charity believes passionately in the power of partnerships. We are proud to be a strategic partner of University Hospitals Plymouth NHS Trust and understand that by working closely with our partners in the NHS, NHS charities and local organisations we can significantly enhance support for patients and NHS staff across Devon.
We are proud to be the lead charity for Devon for the NHS Charities Together (NHS CT) Community Partnership Grants Programme launched in September 2020.
NHS Charities Together is the national, independent NHS charity caring for the NHS, and represents all NHS charities associated with hospitals, mental health, ambulance and community health services across the UK.
In March 2020 NHS Charities Together launched a Covid-19 Appeal and NHS CT became the focal point for the outpouring of public support. The appeal raised £150 million to support patients, hospital staff, and volunteers at the frontline of the coronavirus crisis.
The Community Partnership Grant Programme is funded through the appeal and was launched in recognition of the vital work that voluntary and community groups do to support the NHS. These groups, such as hospices, care homes and charities, have helped the NHS by supporting the health of communities affected by Covid-19. This funding seeks to support effective partnerships between the NHS and its community partners.
Working closely with our local NHS Charity partners, we identified eight local Delivery Partners and in July 2021 we were informed that our application to NHS CT had been successful. Plymouth Hospitals Charity was awarded £534,639 to support projects that provide vital help to patients, staff and volunteers on the frontline at the most critical of times.
BASICS Devon
Volunteer medics help save lives in communities across rural Devon and can be on site within minutes, day or night. Responding to incidents at the request of the South Western Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust they provide an additional tier of medical support supplementing the excellent service provided by local ambulance crews.
The grant is enabling the expansion of the BASICS Devon voluntary services by funding the training and equipment for three additional volunteer immediate care doctors in Plymouth and Western Devon.
Step One Charity
BeWell@StepOne is an integrated care model using online support pathways to increase capacity for providing and receiving mental health support.
With this grant BeWell@StepOne is providing early intervention to Devon patients experiencing mental health issues. The project aims to prevent GP/ hospital admissions by providing online and in-person support to those who cannot access statutory mental health support, to help prevent them reaching crisis point.
Torbay Community Development Trust
The Torbay Community Helpline provides a wide range of support delivered by citizens, staff and volunteers across a range of partner VCSE and faith groups, providing shopping, prescriptions, befriending, finance and benefits advice, housing support, mental health support, children and family support, links into social care and health, including a hospital discharge home support service.
The grant is funding a Volunteer Coordinator post to recruit, train and support the team of volunteer call handlers.
Devon Community Foundation
Wellbeing Exeter - Community Connecting for Black, Minority Ethnic and Refugee (BMER) communities. This project builds on an existing partnership of voluntary and community sector organisations working together to provide the firm foundations for individuals and communities in the city to improve their health and wellbeing, reducing pressure on health and social care services now and in the future.
This grant is enabling the expansion of the current partnership to develop and increase the support available from the programme to people from culturally diverse communities in Exeter.
Living Options Devon
The Options for Living Project is a new project which aims to reduce health inequalities and pressure on the NHS.
The grant funding has two elements to it. Firstly, it has been used to train a team of Community Vaccine Champions to increase Devon’s COVID Vaccination uptake and secondly, the grant is enabling the development a new hospital discharge support service to prevent re-admissions and reduce inequalities over the long term.
Rowcroft Hospice
Of the 81% of people who wish to die in the comfort of their own home, only 24% achieve this in Devon. The Hospice at Home service helps patients fulfil this goal.
This grant is Increasing capacity within the service. Enabling more patients to access to Hospice at Home.
Healthwatch Torbay & Engaging Communities South West
The Digital Health Devon project offers free online training about how to access local health, social care and wellbeing services using the internet.
This funding is tackling health inequalities by enabling Digital Health Devon to deliver free guidance online and in health care and community settings, showing people how they can use the internet to access resources such as online consultation services and prescription-ordering systems.
One Northern Devon
Home from Hospital and Beyond is a new project that aims to address factors that impact people’s health and likelihood of admission to hospital such as loneliness, cold homes, debt issues and other issues that matter to the patient. The aim is that by supporting patients with these issues there will be a reduction in unnecessary medical interactions.
The funding is enabling One Northern Devon to support hospital patients on their discharge from North Devon District Hospital and supporting patients referred from other health and social care partners to connect them to the non-medical support they need.
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