National Garden Scheme announces major gift to QNI in anniversary year
21 March 2017
The National Garden Scheme has just announced that it will donate £375,000 to the QNI in 2017. The donation is particularly special as this year the QNI is celebrating its 130th anniversary, having been founded in 1887. In a happy coincidence, the National Garden Scheme is also commemorating an important milestone in its history: its 90th anniversary.
‘We are delighted to receive additional support from the National Garden Scheme this year! We live in an era where increasingly, healthcare is delivered in people’s homes and communities, rather than in hospital. People are living longer, often with complex, long term conditions. To enable people to live safe, comfortable and independent lives at home, they often need the support of skilled community nurses. The support we receive from the National Garden Scheme is absolutely vital to every area of our work. I would like to thank every single National Garden Scheme garden owner, whose hard work helps us to improve care for so many of the most vulnerable people in society.’
Dr Crystal Oldman, Chief Executive of the QNIThe money was raised by the National Garden Scheme from private gardens opening for charity during 2016. In total, the National Garden Scheme raised a record £3 million for nursing and caring charities during the year. The National Garden Scheme is the biggest single funder of the QNI, and enables the charity to carry out all of its activities, including supporting the Queen’s Nurse programme. The QNI’s professional network of Queen’s Nurses includes over 1000 nurses working in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, in a wide variety of community nursing specialties.
Queen’s Nurses are active garden visitors themselves, and have a key role to play in promoting gardening and garden visiting as healthy activities among the communities that they serve. In June of this year, to commemorate the National Garden Scheme’s anniversary, 90 Queen’s Nurses will visit the Queen’s garden at Frogmore.
ENDS
Notes to Editors:
The QNI is dedicated to improving the nursing care of people in their own homes:
– through our national network of Queen’s Nurses, who are committed to the highest standards of patient care, learning and leadership
– by funding practical projects led by nurses, improving the care that patients receive and advancing nursing practice
– by campaigning for excellent nursing care in the home for everyone who needs it
– by giving assistance to nurses, working and retired, who are in financial need
– by offering educational grants to enhance community nurses’ clinical knowledge
– by reducing social isolation in retired community nurses by linking them with regular telephone contact from new Queen’s Nurses through our Keep In Touch project.
To find out how to join in with The QNI’s 130th anniversary celebrations, please check our website and follow us on social media.
For more information about the work of The National Garden Scheme please visit their website.
Press contact: Matthew Bradby
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