Celebrating our volunteers: Five years of the Maudsley Clothes Bank
As a Trust, we are supported by around 400 volunteers each year who bring their own individual skills, experience and passion to the Trust.
Today we are highlighting the incredible work of the team behind the Maudsley Clothes Bank, a small idea with a big impact.
Addressing the needs of service users
Five years ago, a short conversation sparked the beginning of a powerful initiative.
Clinical Specialist Occupational Therapist, Rob Rathouse and Clinical Lead Occupational Therapist, Carole Hardy noticed a recurring issue. Many adult service users arrive at our hospitals with only the clothes that they are wearing at the time of admission.
Emergency admissions often mean that there isn’t time to pack spare clothing, additional clothing isn’t always available or a consideration of those bringing them in.
To change this, Rob and Carole secured grant funding from Maudsley Charity’s Time to Smile programme and launched the Maudsley Clothes Bank at the Community Link Centre based at Bethlem Royal Hospital.
The goal of this project was clear: Restore dignity, comfort, and routine to service users through access to pre-loved, everyday clothing.
Supporting our service users
Wearing sleepwear during the daytime can negatively impact on service users’ routines and structure, which can further impact their mental health. The Clothes Bank helps to bridge this gap, by offering clean, comfortable, everyday clothing that supports recovery and wellbeing. The space also has laundry facilities to ensure clothes are clean and comfortable.
As well as providing a brilliant service for service users, the Clothes Bank also helps the Trust by reducing applications for clothing grants and working towards being more environmentally sustainable.
The work of our volunteers
From the beginning, volunteers have been at the heart of the Clothes Bank.
Each week, these volunteers give four hours of their time to support an estimated 250 service users each year. The dedicated team start their day by sorting through any newly donated clothes and categorising them by sizes and types.
Once this is done, the volunteers go on to the wards, speak with staff to understand who might need new clothes this week, carefully take note of requests and then build personalised packages of clothes aligned to the size, style, fit and comfort levels. Each parcel is hand-delivered to the service users with each volunteer picking and packing around 20 parcels a week.
Through word of mouth, more people are finding out about the Clothes Bank. Now, new bags of clothes – donated by staff and volunteers - arrive weekly but demand remains. As we enter the colder months, more donations are needed to continue supporting our service users.
Carole Hardy said: “The weekly volunteer visits to the wards by our fabulous volunteers help remind staff that we rely on donations and in many respects these staff see the very real impact that the clothing bank has on restoring the dignity and aiding the recovery of the inpatients we serve.”
With more volunteers, the Clothes Bank could expand beyond its one-day-a-week operation – supporting even more service users and fulfilling the project aims of restoring dignity, comfort and routine to those accessing our services.
