10 December 2020

Generous CNWL staff at the Westcroft Community Mental Health services are preparing and filling gift bags to provide some Christmas cheer for some of their most isolated patients.

Staff will be distributing around 50 Christmas bags over the run up to Christmas. These will contain a variety of gifts and tins of food collected by staff, friends and family.

Physical Health Nurses Denise Miles and Julie Lockwood started the Christmas project in 2018 as they were concerned some patients had little or no access to any Christmas festivities.

The teams at Westcroft support service users with complex mental health needs to live safely in the community and reduce their isolation.

Denise and Julie said: “It’s been difficult for us to fundraise this year because of Covid so we’ve been more reliant on staff donations, family and friends including  the kind generosity of CNWL and we certainly feel that staff have made extra efforts this year to help us to continue to support service users with Christmas gifts.

“Service users have felt more isolated this year because of Covid and we felt it was vital we did something for them this year.”