24 October 2019

Multi-award winning media company UKTV is working in partnership with its long-term supplier Circle IT to donate laptops to local charities.

UKTV has donated all laptops that have been in use for three years, allowing Circle IT to securely wipe and redeploy them in local charities. One of the charities benefiting from the scheme is the UK's leading paediatric palliative care charity - Ty Hafan.

About Ty Hafan

Ty Hafan was established as Wales' first children's hospice in 1990 and it welcomed its first families in 1999 after founder Suzanne Goodall felt driven to open a facility that offered care to life-limited children and young people. Based in Sully, South Wales, Ty Hafan aims to meet all the needs of children, young people and their families, at every step of their difficult journey.

The laptop donations will benefit both staff and families and the updated technology will enable the charity to continue to improve the level of care and support that they are able to provide.

Sarah Pierce, Head of IT, Ty Hafan, said:

The donation has been very timely for us with the Care project training. The laptops have been well received by the Care staff and in particular enable Ty Hafan outreach workers to easily use the Care Database whilst visiting the families, thus enabling Ty Hafan to give a better more efficient service. Care plans and biographical information can be updated with the families resulting in a safer care model for all. The equipment and the Database will give the staff more time to visit the families rather than having to come back to the office to update notes. The hospice staff will also have more up-to-date visit records arising in a more Realtime experience and credibility to the data held. There are also cost savings to be made by less travelling and better visit planning in addition to an estimated donation value of £5850.

Noel Ryan, Service Delivery Manager at UKTV said:

I'm so pleased we've been able to work with Circle IT on this great initiative. They made the laptop donation process quick and easy and it's wonderful to see the laptops being put to such good use. We're committed to repurposing all IT devices wherever possible and this is just one of the ways that we're trying to be carbon neutral and sustainable here at UKTV.

Roger Harry, Founder and Owner of Circle IT, explains: "We are a homegrown Cardiff company which has worked with many charities over the years and we are committed to investing in supporting the local community. Ty Hafan was chosen as our charity of the year and we found that their current PC estate was under performing and not enabling the staff in the way that it should. In addition to the 30 laptops we have subsequently arranged to donate 2 iMacs and 6 Macbooks which will allow the Ty Hafan team to be able to create, design and edit.

Circle IT have a scheme in place which will see it working in partnership with customers and partners to re-purpose over £1,000,000 of IT equipment. As part of its commitment to the scheme, Circle IT will work with clients, which undergo IT refresh programmes, to establish if they will kindly donate their old devices. As part of our corporate social responsibility, our employees are encouraged to take 2 days per year to work on CSR projects and they will be assisting with the deployment of the donations from the initial pick up to deployment for the end user.

We have previously donated laptops to charities such as Cardiff Mind and Bobath as well as local schools and some of the poorest schools and orphanages in Kenya. We hope to extend this programme with other clients to allow this initiative to continue to grow and benefit even more people.

The amount of wastage in the IT industry is incredible and being able to extend the life of kit like this goes a long way to helping, we aren't just looking at laptops and PC's we have also redeployed network equipment to schools and charities as well.

It's fantastic that we have the support of many of our clients to enable us to successfully run this scheme and we hope that by raising awareness of the scheme, more companies will get involved, allowing as many charities as possible to benefit from the donations for many years to come."

Rob Jones, CEO at Ty Hafan, said:

We aim to invest every penny we can in providing care to our families, so we are incredibly grateful to Circle IT and UKTV for the donation of laptops for our care teams. We found that in working with the Circle IT leadership team we shared common values, and we are benefiting from strategic input in identifying new opportunities in IT development. They are a great team who have fully engaged their corporate social responsibility programme for the ultimate benefit of our families.

For more information, please contact:

Ali Laurie, Network Communications Executive, UKTV

Sarah James, Circle IT - sarah.james@circleit.co.uk

About UKTV

UKTV has been at the forefront of branded television for over 25 years, entertaining the nation with programmes they love. Its leading brands - Dave, Gold, W, Drama, Alibi, Eden and Yesterday - span comedy, entertainment, natural history, factual and drama, and are delivered to audiences through UKTV Play, Freeview, Sky, Virgin Media, BT, TalkTalk, YouView, Freesat and Amazon Fire. The broadcaster is a significant investor in British creativity and is committed to working with new and established writers, directors and programme-makers.

UKTV is part of BBC Studios, the UK's most-awarded production company, a world-class distributor with international branded services, and a commercial subsidiary of the world's leading public service broadcaster, the BBC.

corporate.uktv.co.uk | press.uktv.co.uk | @uktvpress

About Circle IT

Circle IT specialises in providing managed IT services, security and support to education and a range of business, from SME's through to large muti-site organisations. The company is committed to providing the highest quality IT services, aiming to deliver growth through the use of cutting edge technology, working in partnership with key vendors to bring customers the latest technology.

Circle IT offers an extensive range of IT support and services including IT consultancy, managed services, project management, cyber security, networking and disaster recovery. Headquartered in Cardiff, the company is a Microsoft Gold and Cloud Accelerate Partner, Dell Technologies Platinum Partner, Citrix Silver and VMware Enterprise Partner and focuses on delivering enterprise solutions and services.

For more information, visit www.circleit.co.uk