Last year I wrote an article about how “No-one is bigger than the Team”. I compared my experiences coaching youth football with good planning and practice in the workplace.
18 months later our world is a very different place.
In my role here at SVL, I work with NHS Ambulance Trusts and Community Care providers such as Tunstall Healthcare, Jontek and many others. As part of our role, we look after NHS 24, Ambulance and Police Control Centres in all regions across the UK and Ireland.
It has been quite humbling to support these wonderful organisations, as their staff have worked tirelessly to save and protect lives during the Covid19 crisis. Brave people who risk their health to save the lives of others.
The unseen story is also quite remarkable. We’ve helped our partners as their control (call) centres went from a large, fit-for-purpose offices to people working from their kitchen tables and more unusual spaces.
As a result of this change in our everyday working practices, SVL have installed additional call-recording lines within NHS Contact Centres, not just to increase capacity but to allow better social distancing amongst the staff who had to be based in a Control Room.
We’ve even seen former Airline and Banking staff retrained to boost 999 capacity during the spring.
It was, and is, our pleasure to stand up and support our “Blue Light” and community care partners during this crisis.
Here at SVL we started out by recording Police calls over 50 years ago and today supporting those people out saving and protecting lives is still at the core of our business.
So, my other team, Drighlington Juniors, who I have proudly coached for over a decade, also chose to make a statement in support of the NHS and all they have done for us this year.
Our under 21 side chose to go down a different road this 2020/21 season. Rather than having the normal corporate sponsor logo, they wanted to pay their respects to the NHS by wearing a “Thank You NHS” logo on their home strip.
I was delighted that SVL supported us by providing the team with our colours for the season.
Drighlington have teams covering all age groups and it was great to see our team wearing their new “NHS” kit for the first time recently as most people in this team, players, coaches and supporters will have all had help and support from our NHS at some point in their lives.
We will never forget this year. So both SVL and Drighlington Juniors want to show our appreciation for all that the NHS have done for us and when we look back we can reflect on what we did to help the NHS, but also will look back on how we showed our appreciation.
Thank you NHS.
