Thursday 23rd November saw over 300 of the very best in social care attended a glittering awards ceremony at The Queens Hotel, Leeds for the finals of the Great Yorkshire & Humber Care Awards, where the category winners were announced.

The Great Yorkshire & Humber Care Awards are part of the Great British Care Awards, a series of 9 regional awards celebrating excellence across the care sector.  The purpose of the awards is to promote best practice within both home care and care homes sectors, and pay tribute to those individuals who have demonstrated outstanding excellence within their field of work.

Sector support includes Care England, The Department of Health, The National Care Forum, The Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE) and the Voluntary Organisations Disability Group (VODG), as well as local authorities and commercial organisations.

There are a total of twenty one award categories available for nomination, which represent all areas of the care sector, whether it be older people or specialist services and from frontline staff such as care workers and care managers to people who have made an impact in other ways such as training and innovation.

Winners of the Great Yorkshire & Humber Care Awards will go through to the final at Birmingham’s ICC in Spring 2018.

The winners of the Great British Yorkshire & Humber Care Awards, together with the judge’s comments are detailed below:

The Care Employer Award

Happy Futures

Describing themselves as honest, dynamic and passionate, this shone through from the individuals approach to care, to the wider community interaction. They go over and above such as by delivering individual thank you letters and gifts to all employees.

 

The Care Home Worker Award

David Sidebottom, Hesley Group

David demonstrated considerable enthusiasm, passion, drive and commitment for the people he works for. He has specialist skills and is dedicated to promoting choice, independence and fun at all times. He clearly loves the job, the individuals and the team.

 

The Home Care Worker Award

Amanda Sanderson, Care Dynamics Yorkshire

Amanda has an evident passion for her job, she goes more than the extra mile in caring and supporting her clients and demonstrates a real desire to improve people’s lives.

 

The Care Newcomer Award

Georgia Miller, Hesley Group

Georgia is a true star whose passion, enthusiasm and positivity shone through. In Georgia’s words ‘all days at work are good days – even if you have a very bad day the good days more than make up for it.’

 

The Care Home Registered Manager Award

Sarah Harrison, Bridgedale House

Sarah is an inspirational individual who is very passionate about promoting independence, dignity and respect for her residents.  She motivates and supports her staff to ensure a person centred culture. A worthy winner!

 

The Home Care Registered Manager Award

Becki Moore, Bluebird Care

Becki demonstrates a hands on management style with a clear knowledge of her staff and customers and a knowledge of development opportunities. Her engagement with the local community and her efforts to tackle social isolation are also very praiseworthy.

 

The Care Home Cook/Chef Award

Julie Reavey, Advinia

The effort and dedication her role is exemplary and ensuring a man wife could have a candle lit dinner together was beautiful even though they could not live together Julie ensured they could dine together.

 

The Dignity in Care Award

Sophie Feurtado, Exemplar Health Care

Sophie is an inspirational individual operating a truly inspiring outcome focused care provision meeting the needs of her clients with dignity at the heart of the service.

 

The Dementia Carer Award

Angela Briggs, Dernlea Park Residential Home

Angela has created with the team a village within the dementia unit. This includes a post office, church, shop, barbers and hardware store. It has been created based on the interest and needs of the residents and she has turned a clinical environment into a stimulating and homely place.

 

The Care Team Award

Temple Field House, Caretech

Both Earle and Beverly demonstrated an absolute passion for their service and evidenced a commitment to person centred care. It was clear that temple field had a culture that was led by the needs of people who lived in the service.

 

The Care Home Activities Co-ordinator Award

Lisa Webster & Lisa Glynn, Orchard Care Homes

Both ladies demonstrated a real passion for their role. They have some innovative ideas that have made a real difference. Their focus on family support groups is applaudable.

 

The Ancillary Worker Award

Dawn Stride, Darwin House

Dawn goes the extra mile for both colleagues and the residents in the home. She organises events, birthday parties, day trips out over and above her day job running a busy office. She likes to make a difference in everything that she does.

 

The Care Trainer Award

Karl Tomlinson, Ashfield Court

Karl has a passion for delivering outstanding training.  His hard work, energy and focus means that training is always relevant and up to date. A dedicated care professional.

 

The Care Innovator Award

Heather Sherratt, Making Space

Making space provide an invaluable service to carers and people living with dementia. Recognising the need in the local community, making space developed a range of options providing support for carers which help provide inclusive dementia friendly services.

 

The Frontline Leaders Award

Andy Raikes, Hesley Group

Andy clearly leads from the front and is well respected by his colleagues. His passion for his job shines through and he is a deserving winner.

 

The Home Care Co-ordinator Award

Gaynor Underhay, Direct Health

Gaynor is a well deserved winner and has demonstrated a high level of care and co-ordination knowledge when working with a dispersed work force. Congratulations Gaynor!

 

The Care Assessor/Care Planner Award

Katie Leonard, Exemplar Health Care

Katie is a truly deserving winner. Her professionalism, dedication has resulted in outstanding person centred care for her service users.

 

The Putting People First/Personalisation Award

Lindsey Heaton, Aire House

Lindsey is truly inspiring. A force for good who has changed many people’s lives. Her ‘can do’ approach and achievements are breath taking both in the workplace and wider community.

 

The Good Nurse Award

Diane Jones, Exemplar

Diane has a proven desire to care and improve care through outcomes for individuals.  She leads by example and is a well regarded mentor for other staff.

 

The Palliative Care/End of Life Award

The Darwin House Team

The passion this team showed shone through and their care ethos is truly wonderful. They are a very special team and worthy winners.

 

The Unpaid Carers Award

Dawn Bassett

In the words of the team that nominated Dawn:

 

Dawn works at Direct Health 30 hours a week as an Admin Assessor.  Dawn has a lovely daughter called Laura whom she adopted as a baby. Laura has Downs Syndrome  and  is now a young adult but still needs lots of love and care.

 

Whilst Dawn works,  Laura has a carer and works as a volunteer in Primark packing bags. I have spent time with Laura and can see how much love and encouragement she has had to help her achieve a fulfilling life.

 

When we have office charity raffles and fundraisers Laura has be known to come in and make cups of tea, sell raffle tickets and has even decorated candles to sell to help raise funds.

 

We have lots of admiration for Dawn on how she manages to work and still spend quality time with her lovely adopted daughter encouraging her to volunteer by example.

 

The Outstanding Contribution to Social Care Award

James Rycroft, Vida Healthcare

In 2010 together with his father Chris, James co-created Vida Healthcare with a view to developing a pioneering care home for people living with dementia.

James’ uses his innovative approach for the design and development of his homes and is able to influence the delivery of dementia care in the UK.

James is committed to ensuring the delivery of outstanding and personalised care for all residents as well as planning future projects and developments for Vida Healthcare.

James is a pioneer in the sector and has made an outstanding contribution not only to staff and residents but to the whole of social care.