Almost 2,000 celebrate at Trust’s Summer Street Parties
Almost 2,000 members of staff, patients, carers and members of the local community came together to celebrate at our Making Life Better Together Summer Street Parties in July. The Making Life Better Together Programme is a Trust initiative aiming to increase engagement with and improve the experience of mental health care for patients, staff and the community.
The annual summer celebration returned bigger and better this year, with street parties hosted at our Springfield Hospital headquarters and Tolworth Hospital, as well as for the first time at three of our community sites: the Wilson Hospital, Livingston House and Jubilee Health Centre.
The street parties are an opportunity for us to come together with our community and celebrate the hard work of our staff and teams. This year’s events were made even more special by coinciding with the 75th anniversary of the NHS and the official opening of the new Springfield Village community.
You can watch a short film celebrating the opening of Springfield Village at the Springfield Summer Street Party here.
Vanessa Ford, Chief Executive, said: “Our Summer Street Parties are always a fantastic occasion and celebration of our incredible, diverse community – this year’s events were no exception. Putting our patients and communities first is at the heart of everything we do and it’s only right that we celebrated together as the NHS marked its milestone 75th birthday. Thank you to all who came and made the parties so special and inclusive.”
The roads were closed across the five sites to host local vendors serving street food from around the world, a marketplace with information stands about our services and other community organisations, live music performed by charity Sound Minds, face painting, a patient art exhibition, sports activities, dancing and much more.
At the Springfield party, our staff and teams showed off their baking skills with a special NHS 75-themed bake-off competition which raised over £300 for the Trust’s newly launched charity, the South West London and St George’s Mental Health NHS Trust Charitable Fund.
The street parties also saw the launch of 75 faces of SWLSTG – a photo project the celebrating the hundreds of hardworking and dedicated individuals at the Trust who make a difference every day, and make the NHS such a rewarding place to work.
Vanessa added: “Building Springfield Village and making it a truly inclusive and stigma-breaking community requires all of our partners working together. We are so grateful to Barratt London, STEP, London Square and City & Country for working with us and demonstrating their commitment by helping us to host such special events for our staff and communities.”
