Every day, 300 babies are admitted to neonatal care either because they were born premature or because they were born full-term but sick. Some of these babies will need life-saving care for weeks and sadly, some will never make it home at all. When parents can provide hands-on care, babies have the very best long-term developmental outcomes and parents’ wellbeing is also improved. But because of COVID-19, parents’ ability to be with their babies in neonatal care is being limited by changes to access onto neonatal units and the effects of the lockdown. The emotional toll of this on families is huge. One father who is no longer allowed to see his baby told us: ‘I feel like I’ve had a bit of my heart taken out’. A mother who is seeing her baby on alternative days so her partner can also be with him said: ‘It’s hard leaving your son at all, never mind not being able to go up when you want to see him. And I’ve got the underlying worry on top of all that about whether he’s going to have any long-term health problems.’ Current Parental Leave policies are already not fit for purpose for parents with a baby in neonatal care. Bliss was delighted when the UK Government announced they would introduce Neonatal Leave and Pay. But this won’t be available until 2023.Many parents have been furloughed on 80% pay, and self-employed parents will have to wait until June for Government help towards their loss of income. The UK Government must introduce a version of Neonatal Leave and Pay now to support parents in this unprecedented situation – and ensure it covers those who are self-employed or in insecure work. Previous research by Bliss found that the average cost of having a baby on a neonatal unit was £282 per week – due to daily travel, parking food and drink at the hospital, accommodation and childcare for older children. These costs are even more difficult to manage during COVID-19. Parents without a car are being asked to avoid public transport, making them reliant on costly taxis or on lifts. Many food establishments at hospitals have closed, limiting choices and parent accommodation is increasingly unavailable on hospital sites due to infection control reasons. Nationally coordinated funds, and access to free parking at NHS sites, are essential to enable parents to be with their baby at this time. Having a baby in neonatal care is a traumatic experience at any time, but, for many parents, their anxiety and stress is heightened because of the COVID-19 pandemic. To minimise the spread of the virus, neonatal units across the UK have made difficult decisions to restrict who can come onto the unit – with most now only allowing one parent onto a neonatal unit at a time. Understandably, parents suspected to have COVID-19 are not allowed onto neonatal units at all, leading them to be separated from their baby for up to two weeks. To prevent prolonged unnecessary separation, parents of babies in neonatal care should be prioritised for rapid testing if they are suspected to have COVID-19.

As the coronavirus pandemic sweeps across the UK, essential workers like medical staff and supermarket workers are both saving lives and keeping our country going. The government with the HSE should come up with a comprehensive plan to keep all workplaces in the UK safe from Covid-19 and set an official target that no more workers should die from catching Covid-19 at work.

I have a relative in prison and Im also doing this to help other prisoners, staff members, family members and delivery drivers who deliver parcels, food etc.

The Country claps to show our appreciation for Carers across the Country every Thursday at 8pm. Now lets show our appreciation to ALL our Carers by helping them financially. We can do this by petitioning Government to provide them all with a lump sum bonus.

On 13th April 2020 Guardian journalists discovered that the UK government have missed 3 chances to join a €1.5 billion EU scheme to buy PPE (personal protective equipment) to protect health and social care staff working against coronavirus. Medical unions in the UK are currently warning that stocks of protective gowns are critically low. On 12th April the Royal College of Surgeons found one in three surgeons in the UK lack enough protective kit. On 11th April the British Medical Association warned that NHS staff are risking their lives because they still don't have proper protective kit. And the UK Royal College of Nursing currently has fears that nurses may not be able to work due to lack of PPE. This is putting medics in the impossible ethical position of having to choose between the care of their patients, and their own lives. And if more health and social care staff start to die this leaves fewer skilled people to care for those who are sick. Evidence from the frontline is clear that whatever our government is currently doing is not providing the NHS with enough protective kit for all staff who need this. This is clearly too big, and too urgent, for the UK to go alone. Please join me, as an NHS medic, in supporting this petition to ask our government to consider the will of the British people in deciding whether to join the EU PPE procurement plans, which we still can - to protect our healthcare workers, so that they can keep working to protect us all.

The NHS and care staff are putting themselves at the greatest risk and losing their lives to protect and save others who have fallen victim to the virus. They are now dying and this is having an increasingly demoralising effect on the staff when they are all scared and worried about their safety. We must honour and respect everyone who has fallen victim to this unprecedented global pandemic and we must put the humanity back into the statistics we are being given. We ask you as our Health leaders to avoid hiding information from us for the fear of scaring us. I'm a nurse and together with my colleagues we think about our risk every day. Losing a colleague will be absolutely devastating to us on the front line as it is to all our colleagues who have already lost their friends. Reading out their names is a very small step that has huge humanistic benefits for us in the health care sector and the whole population at this grave and dangerous time for us all. I also call on the government to call for a weekly minute silence for all the victims each Thursday evening alongside the positive expression of gratitude that is currently occurring.

Because they are overworked ,undervalued and they are our key brave frontline careers

The whole of the Country are behind our health and social care workers and we believe that the front line staff should have access to adequate PPE to perform their roles with the highest level of protection.

MANORLANDS is facing closure within months due to a funding crisis. Sue Ryder, which runs the Oxenhope hospice, says income has dried-up because of the coronavirus pandemic. The charity, which relies on public donations to maintain its services, has had to close its shops and cancel fundraising events. Now, with a potential funding gap of £12 million over the next three months, Sue Ryder is warning that without immediate financial support it will be forced to shut its hospices and stop providing its other end-of-life services. “During this particular period it should be providing 100 per cent funding – and then looking to the future, covering at least half the running costs of our hospices.”

Randox received £23 million in public funds through Invest NI in 2018, and benefited from a research partnership with our two universities QUB and UU. Now they are selling at an extortionate price (£120 per test) at a time when people are worried about food and job security and how they'll keep a roof over their heads. Meanwhile our NHS is struggling as they don't have enough tests so that key healthcare professionals can continue to do their vital work on the frontline of the fight against this global pandemic. Demand that Randox releases the Covid-19 tests free of charge to the NHS and stops profiteering from this crisis.

With the spreading of the Coronavirus at frightening levels across the UK at the present time and with the fact that those in Dunfermline and surrounding areas at present need to travel 15 miles to either Kirkcaldy or Edinburgh for A and E services and the fact that with the rapid spreading of the Coronavirus that this puts a totally unacceptable disadvantage to the people of fife needing emergency treatment the First Minister and the Cabinet Secretary for Health should take immediate steps to reopen a full A and E service at Dunfermline's Queen Margaret Hospital that should Never ever have been closed in the first place!

To let health care workers across the nation know how much they are appreciated all the time not just in times of need.