Thursday 19/03/2020 – 15:30
Hi everyone,
With the global outbreak of COVID-19 affecting us all, I wanted to update you in terms of what we’re doing. As a charity, we are following all the advice issued by HM Government and Public Health England and will continue to monitor the situation carefully. Our priorities are:
To provide information and support to expectant and new parents and their health professionals about group B Strep
We’ll be keeping our Helplines open. Like others, we’ll be working from home, so please excuse any unusual background noises. We’ll continue to send out free leaflets, posters and stickers to the NHS and families, though these take slightly longer to reach their destination than usual.
To improve the prevention and treatment of group B Strep infection in babies
We’ll continue to push for improvements to national and local policies and practices, and work to make high-quality information on group B Strep ever more accessible.
To do everything we can to make sure pregnant women are informed about group B Strep
So that more and more babies avoid the impact of severe group B Strep infection
Clearly, we are also prioritising the health and wellbeing of our staff, so we are working from home for the foreseeable future. Our team is well set up to work remotely and are fully responsive via phone, email and on social media as usual. We can conduct any meetings online or via conference call. We are confident that the quality of our services will remain as high as usual, but we appreciate your patience as we deal with any wrinkles that we discover along the way.
We’re assessing the potential impact of coronavirus on our funding. With large events like marathons, corporate, and community fundraising events either cancelled or postponed, this will have a large and negative effect on our income.
This is going to be a tough time for the charity. Thanks to the careful planning from our Board of Trustees, we have financial reserves to keep the charity’s key activities running for some time. However, we are still a small charity with no statutory funding, so are hugely reliant on your generosity.
Thank you for your continued support – it will make such a difference to what we’re able to do. We are looking forward to an eventual return to more normal circumstances.
Should you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me.
With best wishes,
Jane Plumb MBE
Chief Executive of Group B Strep Support
