Two Weeks To Go!

Is anyone horrified it’s March already? I certainly am.

In four days, I will be on half pay. I know, for many, that’s happened already, or it’s happening shortly. I know many of you are now on no pay at all.

We have just two weeks until we head to Downing Street. Two weeks where we try to raise as much support as humanly possible. This would be daunting if we weren’t trying to live with a condition which saps your energy, causes all manner of issues across various organ systems and generally, as far as most of us are concerned we DO NOT LIKE. 

So on our to-do list - 

• Contact more MPs and ask them to raise questions of the Health Minister and at PMQs
• Contact the media about the handing in of our petition, as well as our campaign 
• Write the briefing and press releases
• Continue our social media presence
• Promote the survey, collate the data
• Try and get us to 150k supporters
• Draft letters and emails
• Gather and collate [anonymous] case statements, for use with the campaign 

We’d also like you to know that we, along with some friends in the Long Covid community are working on something, which we hope to release imminently - so keep an eye on social media for the big drop. 

If you can bear it (or want to), we’d ask you to please continue to share the petition and survey across your networks, with friends and family. 

In reference to the last ask, we have prepared a Case Study Document: We would like to present some Case Studies along with our petition. Some of us who’ve done them already have chosen not to be anonymous, but we would like to assure everyone that you absolutely do not have to be. So, instead of: “Cass, 47, a nurse from Edinburgh” you could put “L, 40s, nurse in Scotland”. The format of the document is so that we can gather as much information as possible. If you’ve got any problems, let us know. You do not have to complete any question that you find uncomfortable, too personal, triggering a r otherwise difficult, but please do stick to the format (we will edit out the leading statements/questions later, so it reads properly).

If you feel you need to talk to someone following looking at our template, you can contact Samaritans on 116 123.

Other instructions are in the document; when you’ve completed it, please email it to keyworkerpetition@gmail.com, with Case Study in the subject line. 

(I put the link up here. Be advised; I was finding it difficult to sort out their Google Doc Drive last night, so if that does not work, please let us know and I will beg for assistance from others. Note that this kind of thing is not unusual for me; I openly admits that the fact I’ve managed to hyperlink in documents is my biggest achievement of the last year. Well, aside from my contribution to this campaign). 

We would suggest you save this document for your own use, for example you might like to use it in emails to your elected representatives (MPs, MSPs and so on), plus you can then also work on it in your own time. We cannot hand in all of them, but we can hand in a selection. If you would be happy for us to anonymously share your case study as a petition update, please indicate this in the body of the email with your completed case study. 

Anyway, I leave you with three words, as left in the open comment section of our survey. It sums up why we are doing this:

Please help us.

We won’t stop trying.