In 2020 Direct Line Group (DLG) launched their Community Fund, an initiative to help communities across the UK affected by the COVID pandemic. After learning of our ambitions to extend our support services to those affected by COVID, DLG selected The UK Sepsis Trust (UKST) to become a beneficiary of this incredibly generous funding, which enabled us to continue our vital work throughout the lockdown period and launch our COVID-19 Recovery Response Initiative.
DIRECT LINE GROUP REACH MILLIONS THROUGH SEPSIS AWARENESS
Following an initial donation of £45,000 in 2020, and the subsequent success of the UKST Recovery Response program – which enabled over 2,500 people to access crucial telephone and email support services following critical illness, DLG went on to become a prolific supporter of UKST. DLG donated another grant to further develop Sepsis Savvy awareness materials, and selected us as a beneficiary for their refund initiative. As travel was restricted due to the national lockdowns, DLG offered customers a refund on their annual insurance policy, giving them the option of donating some or all of the payment to a charity.
Mark Evans, Director of Marketing and Digital and lead for Direct Line Group’s Society pillar, said: “At the heart of our strategy is our vision is to be a ‘force for good’ and that means doing the right thing by our customers, our people, the planet and society.
“It’s this desire to be a ‘force for good’ that guides the business every single day. It’s the reason why we set up our Community Fund to provide support to people and communities most affected by COVID.”
Upon signing up to Sepsis Savvy, DLG included both sepsis awareness information and our Sepsis Savvy resources in their June newsletter, which reached approximately 3 million Direct Line and Churchill customers. As a direct result of this, our support team received calls from many new people affected by sepsis who were unaware of our work and services.
DLG have worked tirelessly to raise potentially life-saving awareness amongst their community through the Sepsis Savvy initiative, and even produced a short film which shared the real-life story of an employee’s terrifying experience of sepsis.
As well as raising much needed awareness amongst their staff, DLG commissioned their creative team to assist with the development of public awareness resources for our World Sepsis Day social media campaign in September 2021. Following the success of the collaboration, UKST were then introduced to Green Flag (also owned by DLG) PR team, to develop ways of raising the profile and visibility of the charity, in the hope that we will be able to help even more people affected by sepsis, a condition which accounts for 1 in 5 deaths worldwide – that’s 11 million people every year.
Dr Ron Daniels, Founder and Joint CEO of UKST commented: “We were absolutely delighted to learn that the Direct Line Group Community Fund awarded the charity such a generous donation. As the pandemic took hold we decided we must extend our support services to help those touched by COVID-19. Sepsis is the body’s extreme response to infection and can be a life-threatening medical condition. It’s usually a complication of a bacterial infection, but can also be caused by viruses, meaning that those critically ill with COVID-19 can also develop sepsis.
The impact of COVID-19 is predicted to lead to a large increase in the number of people who develop these after-effects, so we knew we had to do more to support people through their journey.”
Most recently, as a result of our continued relationship with DLG we are in the process of developing sepsis awareness resources in collaboration with Green Flag and creative agency, Talker Tailor Trouble Maker, which we anticipate will be rolled out in April 2022.
Sign up to Sepsis Savvy here and find more information about sepsis here.