Romford Care Home signed up to Saint Francis Hospice’s Go Orange campaign and organised a car wash. Here Tracy Smith, who is the Customer Relations Manager at the home in Harold Hill, shares why the team got involved to support the charity.
Saint Francis Hospice is close to our hearts for many reasons. Most of our staff live locally and we know how valuable the hospice is to the community. The hospice has looked after the family members and relatives of staff and we have had residents come to the home from the hospice.
Earlier this year I was invited to visit the hospice with our general manager Michelle DiBella and Andy Furneaux from the fundraising team showed us around. It was my first time visiting a hospice and it was really wonderful to see the care in action.
So when Andy got in touch to tell me about the Go Orange campaign, we decided to organise a car wash so we could get the whole community involved.
We have a great team and they really got on board to make the day great fun and a huge success.
Bob Berger, whose wife lives at the care home, is our relative ambassador and he donned overalls in the hospice’s brand orange and got stuck in.
My son Alfie, along with the children of other staff members got involved too and they loved washing the cars. A lot of our residents are living with dementia and it was such a great opportunity for them to learn about the condition and understand that it isn’t something to be scared of.
We thought we would be lucky if we got six cars so we couldn’t believe how busy the day was. We must have washed at least 35-40 cars and we were so proud we were able to raise £250 to help patients and families who need the hospice.
It was definitely worth all the effort. At the end of the day, we were absolutely soaked, filthy dirty and the kids slept amazingly well. So many people don’t realise the hospice is a charity and just assume it is their right to be able to go from a hospital to a hospice if they wish. But running costs are going up and it relies on donations to fund its services.
We knew we could only raise a very small amount for the hospice but we wanted to do what we could and will continue to do so.
