We’ve held two further marketplaces, helping over 150 colleagues kit out their children for the new school year for free.

Our marketplaces, held at Queen’s Hospital on Thursday 29 August and King George Hospital on Friday 23 August, are an opportunity for staff to pick up school uniforms, as well as other clothes, toys, household items and even DVDs for free, to help them with the rising cost of living.

Since we launched them in August 2022, we’ve held 10 of these marketplaces, helping around 1,500 of our staff. From the start we’ve partnered with the charity S.M.I.L.E London and Essex, which has donated new school uniforms.

As they’ve grown, we’ve extended to accept donations of other clothes and household items from staff, which are then offered at our marketplaces. The only cost to staff for attending is a £3 donation, which goes to S.M.I.L.E to help them continue to support us.

For the first time, these marketplaces included new stationery such as calculators and pencil cases, which was a big help for mum-of-five and nurse Matilda Beattie (pictured above left with fellow nurse Catherine Joseph), with her back to school bill.

She said:

With five children aged five to 15 this time of year is very expensive, so this is a really good help.

I’ve been at our Trust for 10 years and this is the first time I’ve come to one of these, and I’m so glad I did.

It was also a first visit for Naima Mohammed, a healthcare assistant who joined our Trust four months ago. She said:

It really helps; with the economy right now, things are tight.

I have two children aged six and three, so I came looking for school uniform and books and found some really useful bits. It’s good to get some extra help.

The idea for the marketplaces came from Charleen Elton, our Staff Experience Manager (pictured above left with Deepika Selvaranjan, organisational development facilitator):

With school uniforms being a significant expense, I realised using other online markets meant staff needed to travel to collect items or pay delivery costs. I wanted to create something where staff could pick up the items they needed during their shifts.

The response from staff has been overwhelmingly positive, with many sharing touching stories of how these marketplaces have helped them manage with increased living costs. We know how much our staff value them so we’re really keen to do everything we can to continue to improve them in the future, such as including information and advice on wellbeing and discounts available.

As well as the regular events, staff can also find items they need at other times following the launch of an online marketplace set up internally for our teams to use.