Page 8 - Essex Mason Spring Special Edition

Provincial

Supporting Care Homes and Hospitals

By W.Bro Lee Taylor
APGM

Essex Mason Donates ssex Mason Donates Dear Brethren,
E
Polo Shirts to all volunteersolo Shirts to all volunteers
P I do hope that you are all well and keeping safe and managing to keep yourselves
busy and in contact with the other members of your Lodges.
I have been asked to write this article to update you all on the initiatives that we
have been running whilst the country is in Lock Down.
The Provincial Grand Master has been holding regular conference calls with the
Deputy PGM, the APGM’s and other Members of the Executive and it was during
one of the calls that the initiative for us to supply PPE to Hospitals, care homes
and other community based Nurses etc. was born.
The initiative was to be funded from the Essex Freemasons Community Fund
(EFCF).
If I can jump ahead slightly and say that the reporting on the News is correct,
in that Care Homes and Hospitals are really struggling in some places to get
adequate PPE.
This statement is based on the feedback from Nurses in Hospitals and Care
Home staff, so clearly it was the right thing to do.
After some research we quickly identified that we would not be able to supply
the disposable day to day items that would be required, simply on a cost basis
as we simply wouldn’t be able to buy enough gloves, aprons and face masks
to make a difference across the 5 Essex Hospitals and the 506 Registered Care
Homes in Essex.
You will have seen across the media, stories of individuals 3D printing visors and
supplying them to the NHS, so we explored this idea and identified that the
process of 3D printing was quite slow and labour intensive, we then stumbled
upon Andy Gale from Oaklair Packaging in Norfolk who alongside running his
V
Victoria & Sydney along with 68 ictoria & Sydney along with 68
business was supplying at cost, laser cut visors at a price that could not be
volunteers made contact with over olunteers made contact with over matched anywhere else that we could find and more importantly, he was able
v
500 Care Homes0 Care Homes to supply.
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The Deputy PGM then went to the Trustees of the EFCF and a grant was given of £20,000 towards the initiative.
So on the 17th April we placed our initial order of 10,000 units, to be delivered in batches of 5000 a week.

You will have seen the Team Brief for the call of support and I was inundated with offers of help, to assist in the administration and
delivery of the items, but we hadn’t even spoken to the care homes at this point!
A team of 24 Masons and W.Bro Robert Brown’s (Lodge of Fraternity No 5916) Daughter and Grand Daughter (Victoria & Sydney)
from the 70 volunteers were then tasked to contact the 506 Care Homes to identify if they needed Visors and how many they needed.
Within 48 hours I had all of the information, including whether any of the Care Homes had Covid 19 cases, which we obviously put
these Homes at the top of the list for a delivery.
A week later 15 volunteers including Victoria and Sydney attended Chelmsford Masonic Hall, where W.Bro Phil Lovelock (Provincial
Grand Secretary) had taken delivery of 5000 Visors that morning and within an hour, all of the Visors were on their way to the four
corners of the Province.

In all and by close of play on Saturday 25th April, all of the visors had been delivered to
186 care Homes.
We were also contacted by Alexandra, a Community Nurse Manager and were able to
provide over 200 of her staff Visors to assist them in keeping safe whilst visiting members
of the Essex Community on their rounds.
At the time of typing this article I am coordinating the second delivery of another 3,500
visors to the remaining Care Homes in Essex, meaning that every Care Home Worker in
Essex that needed a Visor has now received one, donated by you, Essex Freemasons.
We are also going to be directly supporting all of the Hospices within Essex and we will
supply them Visors as well, along with the Air Ambulance, Community Mental Health
Teams across the Province, so watch this space.
One other Initiative that has been driven by the feedback from the care homes with Covid
19 cases is the distinct lack of PPE available to them and in particular Hand Sanitiser.

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