Image credit:
Centre for Sustainable Healthcare – Saplings being tended at Southmead Hospital, Bristol.
For the past five years, the five partner organisations of NHS Workforce Alliance have worked together as one, collaborating with you, our NHS colleagues in trusts and ICBs, assisting you with solutions and offering support to help resolve your workforce challenges and to meet your requirements.
To mark this special milestone and as the traditional gift for celebrating an anniversary of half a decade is wood, the Alliance has decided to sponsor the planting of five trees with NHS Forest.
“As we mark the Alliance’s fifth year, we are delighted to be making a small contribution to this worthwhile green scheme which benefits NHS staff, patients and community groups across the country, as well as playing a part in helping the ecology and planet,” said Will Laing NHS Workforce Alliance Operations Director.
NHS Forest
NHS Forest, an initiative run by the UK charity Centre for Sustainable Healthcare as part of its Green Space for Health Programme, supports healthcare sites in planning, planting and managing trees and woodlands to create habitats for wildlife and sustainable social spaces for people.
Later this year, the Alliance-sponsored trees, will be allotted to an NHS site that has applied to participate in the 2024 – 2025 planting season. The trees will be given to the NHS site free of charge. Planting usually takes place between November and March, using only native trees sourced and grown in the UK and Ireland, which are suited to our climate as well as being disease and pest resistant. In the 2022 – 2023 season, more than 10,000 trees were planted through the scheme.
NHS Forest is an alliance of health sites working to make these green spaces places of maximum benefit to health, wellbeing and biodiversity, whilst encouraging engagement with nature.
It is widely accepted that spending time in nature benefits physical and mental health and wellbeing, lifting mood, reducing stress and aiding recovery. Currently, there are almost 400 NHS Forest sites across the UK.
Further information
For more details about NHS Forest, or to apply for their 2024 – 2025 planting season, please visit their website.
To find out more about the Alliance and how we can support you with all things workforce, please get in touch with your local contact or via the contact form on our website.