NHS Charities Together Council members and team had a wonderful evening at the HSJ Awards on 6th November as their charity partner. We are so grateful to HSJ and Willington Healthcare for choosing NHS Charties Together as their charity partner for the second year in a row. Donations from guests totalled £3155.02; this has been match funded by HSJ and Willington Healthcare to a grand total of £6310.04. A huge thank to HSJ, Willington Healthcare Ltd, the generous guests of the HSJ Awards and our brilliant volunteers for helping out on the night. Curtesy of and great thanks to Imperial Health Charity, we were able to have a draw prize of 5 box tickets to the Royal Albert Hall. Congratulations to Lisa Cooper from Colchester who is the prize winner.

NHS Charities Together Chief Exec, Ellie Orton, addressed the guests and award finalists of the evening with a short speech and inspirational personal film made with our members Jess and Kila from Blue Skies, charity of Blackpool Teaching Hospital. Here is what they had to say:

(Film made by MIH (Make It Happen) Solutions Ltd, www.mihsolutions.co.uk )

‘Our country loves the NHS. People want to say thank you and give back. Saying thank you and giving back is an important part of the patient’s and families’ journey to recovery; it can be a celebration of their recovery and wellness,  a gift of gratitude or in memory,  or it can be to make a difference for other people in the future.

However, NHS Charities seem to be the best kept secret in the country. In a recent survey of UK adults 2 of 3 people did not know the NHS has its own charities.  Even though people don’t know they can give, they do give. So great is the love for the NHS that collectively we have an income of half a billion pounds a year: that’s more that Macmillan and British Heart Foundation put together.

So in the words of Jon Lennon, let’s take a moment to imagine..… what if …..

What if…..more people knew they could say thank you and give back to the NHS through its charities?

What if….more NHS clinicians and support staff knew they had their own trust charity there to support them?

What if…. we valued NHS charities as an important part of the NHS family; a real, credible sources of extra funding.

We have here at the HSJ Awards an arena full of the best of the best of our amazing NHS : the creators, the leaders, the innovators and make it happeners …  you hold the key to enable fundraising to happen in your trust. So, when you go back to work, HSJ Campions or HSJ runners up, be your NHS Charity champions and have those what if conversations.

What if we could…

because together with your NHS charity

we can….

Together we can do more…..’