Newmarket schoolgirl, 11, starts 'blue heart' campaign for NHS

Tamara McAuley, 11, started making blue hearts to show support for NHS workers

An 11-year-old girl has begun a campaign to "show the NHS how proud we are" by displaying blue hearts in windows.

Tamara McAuley, from Newmarket, in Suffolk, "loves art" and designed the hearts in the health service's colour.

Her mother set up a Facebook group and it "took off from there" with the page now close to having 3,000 followers.

Tamara hopes more children will make the hearts to show the NHS "we are all supporting them".

One of her family friends works as a nurse at Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge and sees the blue heart in Tamara's window each time she travels to work.

As Tamara is not old enough to have a Facebook account her mother, Caroline Hutchinson, set up a page on the social media website called Blue Hearts for NHS.

The page now has followers from as far away as Australia and the United States.

Miss Hutchinson said they also have "a lot of nurses and NHS staff commenting on the page as well, saying where they are from and what they do, so I'm really pleased".

Tamara designed hearts in the health service's colour

Miss Hutchinson said the hearts were to acknowledge "how hard NHS staff are working for everybody and how proud the British nation are of them" during the coronavirus outbreak.

"It's for when the NHS staff are going to work they can look up at these windows and just see something to make them smile," she said.

Tamara added: "I am hoping more children will make the hearts to show the NHS how proud we are and that we are all supporting them. Thank you NHS."

People around the UK have taken part in weekly "Clap For Our Carers" tributes, saluting NHS and care workers.

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