An Arbroath mum and daughter are leading the effort to provide scrubs for health professionals and care staff in their area.
While well-known local dressmaker Maureen Beedie is spearheading a volunteer team of sewers to make the much-needed kit, daughter Sarah Stanger has embarked on a crowdfunder bid to buy materials by taking on a Ben Nevis-sized challenge on the stairs of her own home with six-year-old son, Jake.
Arbroath community council member Maureen said she has been inundated with requests for scrubs.
“I signed up to the Scrub Hub group and took it from there,” she said.
“We had a big initial response, mainly from folk wanting scrubs, and then I put out another appeal for volunteers to sew them.”
Maureen has been supplied her first batch of material in a link with Angus Council and work is underway on scrubs destined for the Angus town’s Seaton Grove care home.
She hopes the project will generate more support and demand, with sewing friends keen to get to work.
Daughter Sarah, who has set a £2,000 target for her Go Fund Me effort, said: “I wanted to do something to help mum raise the money for materials because care workers are crying out for PPE.
“Jake is only six, but he and I will be climbing Ben Nevis in our own home – that’s equivalent to climbing 587 flights of stairs and coming down the stairs doesn’t count.
“He’s done really well so far and is excited to help raise money for his gran to help her with this,” she said.
Scrub Hub is a national network of community volunteers who are making scrubs to order for NHS staff struggling to get them during the crisis.
Health and care workers can visit the online hub and have them made to order by sewing teams in their local area.
NHS Tayside is also working with local industry, Dundee University and community volunteers to produce thousands of additional sets of scrubs for frontline staff.
NHS Tayside Linen Services is currently laundering around 6,500 pairs of scrubs for staff to use every week, with an estimated 5,000 additional sets needed by the end ofthis month.
A large number will be made by local textile company Halley Stevensons, with production already under way through its Dundee-based factory.
A small industrial hub will also be established in the Dundee University library and led by textiles staff from Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design.
Local people who have offered to sew scrubs at home will be given packs of fabric and patterns and can sign up to the community effort at www.uod.ac.uk/scrubs-project-form.
Halley Stevensons is donating a large quantity of high-quality fabric to be used by university and community volunteers and Kirriemuir manufacturer J&D Wilkie has offered to cut the fabric into pattern pieces.
