PPE Manufacture - Read teams up with local schools to make child and dementia-friendly PPE
A collaborative initiative between three local schools resulted in the manufacture of over a thousand face visors for local hospitals during recent weeks. Read School Drax has partnered with Holy Family School in Carlton and Tadcaster Grammar School to produce PPE for a number of local hospitals including Pinderfields Children’s ward, Goole Hospital, York District Hospital Children's ward, York Neurology Hospital and Harrogate Paediatric ward as well as local NHS medical centres and care homes. Five Design & Technology teachers from the three schools: Jemma O’Neil, Hannah Deighton and Anita Cooke from Holy Family, John Bell from Tadcaster Grammar and Sarah Rothwell-Wood from Read School teamed up to produce an innovative design of child friendly visors which were quickly in high demand.
‘To see a nurse or doctor wearing a face shield can be a scary experience for a young child in hospital’, said Sarah Rothwell-Wood. ‘Jemma came up with the idea of making these more fun and colourful with the addition of a popular cartoon character. We even made a dementia friendly version for Goole and District Hospital. Word spread on social media about this new PPE design and the team worked hard every Wednesday to keep up with demand. The rest of the week we were delivering remote learning and key worker support in our respective schools. We crowdfunded over £1300 to purchase new PPE materials and received some lovely feedback from the medical staff who received the face shields. It was a real production line as we tried to keep up with the demand and some of our Year 7 pupils got involved to help with the printing and laminating. We all just wanted to do our bit to support the NHS and it was a great way to build teamwork between schools’.
Aims
To forge links with local schools, building teams and coming together to deliver a great fund raising effort and community project, manufacturing PPE for local hospitals, care homes and medical centre
Background
Entrepreneurial and enterprising spirit of our Creative Arts Head of Department, Sarah Rothwell-Wood, working with likeminded individuals in two other partner schools. The partnership was established in early April 2020 and was a collaborative effort to support our local NHS teams.
Resources
All schools donated their design technology facilities, eg laser cutters and all available materials. When these ran out, due to high demand, a Just Giving page was launched to crowd fund the purchase of further PPE materials raiisng over £1300.
Impact
Impact is that PPE was very well received by local medical practitioners
Pupil Involvement
This was chiefly staff but a couple of Read School pupils in Year 7 supported the mask lamination process.
Frequency
Single event - we are now part of a PPE emergency supply national network and poised to make further supplies in future
