Blood Donation in Darlington & Tees Valley

Purpose

To provide Members with an update on the current situation regarding blood donation in Darlington and across Tees Valley.

General

National blood stock levels have improved dramatically since the turn of the year. Traditionally, sessions are well supported from the middle part of January through to February half-term and it is likely that local and national advertising have had a positive impact also.

Maintaining collection and stock levels remains a priority over the Easter holidays and into the summer months. The issues of venues, session times and delays on session, highlighted in our last report are still relevant and although much has been and is being done to improve the appointment system and reduce waiting times, we are still some way from reaching the service standards our donors need and deserve.

However, we have already introduced a number of new sessions, both for dedicated groups and also members of the public. From 2002 to 2007, only one new public session was created in the region covering all areas south of the Tyne to the North Yorkshire border, the fact that four have been created in the last three months is evidence of our commitment to reach out into the community and offer donors choices that better suit their lifestyles.

New Sessions

Locally, we have either held, or have planned sessions at the following locations:

Darlington College Queen Elizabeth College, Darlington Darlington Football Club Wolviston Village, Billingham Easterside, Middlesbrough

We are currently investigating the possibility of visiting the following:

Stockton-on-Tees Council (at Baptist Tabernacle) Stillington Middlesbrough Council

In addition, we are continuing to build relationships with local communities to help us to gain a better understanding of what donors (and potential donors) want from the National Blood Service. We have especially strong links in Darlington, not only through this Committee, but with working alongside Darlington FC and also we are in contact with Council Community Development Workers and Darlington Community Partnerships.

We are hoping to become more involved with similar organisations across Tees Valley and use the knowledge and understanding we gain to look at our session programme and make any changes that we think will encourage more people to support the work we do. These changes range from different times, days of the week, venues or even brand new sessions.

Billingham We are now using St Cuthbert’s Church once again. Our staff spent a day in the town meeting and talking to existing and prospective donors in advance of our first return visit and the session performed well as 78 donations were collected (20% more than expected). However, we still feel there is a need for a more modern central venue to complement available sessions across the town.

Redcar There has not been much progress here. We have not been able to find a suitable alternative venue as yet and although donors continue to support us in the town, there is much work to be done to improve our programme.

Darlington Attendances at St Cuthbert’s have picked up recently, but we place a heavy reliance on a central location, where parking can be an issue. Ongoing work with local groups and organisations should help us offer a more dedicated programme, by reaching out into the communities, rather than asking donors to come to us.

Conclusions

The improvement in attendances in encouraging, but not altogether unexpected. The key is to maintain collection levels through the traditionally much quieter periods of the year. We feel that progress is being made to improve our programme of sessions in certain parts of the region covered by the Committee, although we accept that on-session delays are still an issue that needs to be addressed if we are going to meet the needs of our donors.

Richard Kirby, National Blood Service, Donor Relations Manager  0191 2194568  [email protected]