Walls of hope have been developed across all the Trust acute and 
community hospitals. Their development have been led by the chaplaincy team at North Cumbria Integrated Care NHS Foundation Trust, who wrote to a range of schools and churches asking for images to put up to help give hope to our local NHS staff.
Barrie Thomas Chaplain at the Cumberland Infirmary said: “The Wall of Hope is a wonderful example of encouragement for staff coming into the hospital to see the support out there. It isn’t just the clapping, this is physical evidence of people who are offering their support especially the children who are offering this sense of love coming into the staff coming on duty. It just lifts people up.
“The idea came about from a member of staff’s child who done the first poster, then approached us to see if we could develop it. The idea was to create this Wall of Hope. We asked churches, schools which were still open and those who were closed but were sending work to their students and asked them to do something, get involved and get engaged with the process. Following this the whole wall will be filled up pretty quickly with these messages of hope.”
All the pieces which are sent in go to our Patient Advice and Liaison Support team to be laminated and meet hygiene control standards.
Barrie explained that the chaplaincy team are a service that is always there or staff if they are needed:
“We are a 24 hour 7 day a week service, but obviously at this time even more so, we’re very concerned for the staff. We have a number of things that we do for them; every week out team of chaplaincy and chaplaincy volunteers, have a time of prayer for staff, we applaud the staff, we have the wall of hope, we go onto the wards and deal with the patients that request chaplaincy support pastoral cover, and we deal with the staff the same way.”
The chaplaincy team are also arranging for more quiet spaces in both the Cumberland Infirmary and the West Cumberland Hospital for staff to go to if they need it in their day:
“We’re looking to establish at least three centres which will be pause for thought spaces. These pause for those spaces will be open for all staff, no matter who they are, what role they have whether community based or hospital based. Open for all. They are for those with faith or with no faith it doesn’t matter to us we’re there for the staff.”
To send pictures or message for the Walls of Hope at the Cumberland Infirmary, West Cumberland Hospital or any of our community hospitals please contact the patient advice and liaison team by email pals@ncic.nhs.uk or Telephone: 01228 814008 (Freephone: 0800 633 5547) or Text: 07827 312 699.