Red Cross Blogs

Hat trick of successes fails to inspire world cup related title; blogger bored by football

By Jim Griffin
June 9, 2010 at 10:55 am

Contrary to popular belief the life of a service manager isn’t all glamour and jazz hands. There’s a lot of time spent off the red carpet and away from the limelight, time spent on needs analyses for new projects, invoicing beneficiaries, ordering commode pots and sniffing car seats as and when required. It’s all necessary but about as exciting as dunking a rich tea in a mug of cold Horlicks. In a library. With Aled Jones. There are times it takes effort to remind myself of the good work we do up here in the Walmington-on-Sea branch, the help we give and the difference we make. But not last week.

Last week we had three cracking things happen that reminded me of just how ace we are.

First, we had some great feedback from our skin camouflage outreach project that aims to help people who self-harm, who experience domestic abuse and violent attack or use intravenous drugs. One of our placements is at a secure centre for female offenders who have substance use problems and thanks to skin camouflage one of their residents has stopped self-harming. After years of cutting herself she’s now doing her best to let her wounds heal so skin camouflage creams can be applied. That’s good stuff and all thanks to our project officer Helen.

Second, we had a request to help a terminally ill wheelchair user attend her grand daughter’s wedding. Eight flights of stairs stood in her way so a couple of our volunteers grabbed an ambulance chair and carried her down to the waiting car. Letting the family know we were able to help was one of the highlights of my time with the Red Cross. There was whooping. There was voice-wobble. Not from me, obviously; I’m English. Although I did get something in me eye.

Third, we had a request to collect someone from the airport. They’d been injured while on holiday somewhere in Africa, didn’t have insurance and had to make their way back on a stretcher. After a bit of negotiating with airport security we were able to collect them from the plane and take them home in one of our ambulances. There was another family de-panicked thanks to our coordinators Chris and Lorna.

All in all it was a week to make you proud to be with the British Red Cross.

In other news I’m leaving the British Red Cross. I’ll see you for a farewell post at the tail end of July. You bring the Twiglets.

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Tags: Skin Camouflage

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