Friday 10th November saw over 300 of the very best in social care attended a glittering awards ceremony at The Hilton Bankside, for the finals of the Great London Care Awards, where the category winners were announced.
The Great London 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.
Winners of the Great London Care Awards will go through to the final at Birmingham’s ICC in Spring 2018.
The winners of the Great British London Care Awards, together with the judge’s comments are detailed below:
The Care Employer Award
The Good Care Group
The Good Care Group, led by Dominique Kent, are an outstanding organisation. Their professional approach, values and vision are brought to life by the way they value their staff and create a caring environment for their customers.
The Care Home Worker Award
Gail Keane, Barchester
Having been bought up in care herself between the ages of 14 and 16 Gail has worked in the care sector all her life. She is dedicated and passionate about delivering high quality, person centred care and puts her service users at the heart of everything. Gail is a true star of our sector!
The Home Care Worker Award
Ursula Barallon, Octavia Housing
Ursula is a worthy winner whose passion and expertise has transformed the service she works at. Having repeatedly gone above and beyond the call of duty, Ursula has mentored colleagues and introduced new initiatives which have profoundly improved the health and happiness of the people she supports.
The Care Newcomer Award
Laura Mattell, Arthur House Care Homes
Laura moved to the UK in 2013 from Italy with no English. following a life changing illness, Laura left behind her job as a criminal solicitor to work as a care assistant. Her passion, caring nature and her resilience have really shone through. Well done Laura!
The Care Home Registered Manager Award
Juliana Mensah, Westgate Healthcare Juliana has a reassuring and bubbly personality. She is there for the residents, and supportive of her staff, working alongside staff and ensuring resident’s get quality personalised care in a home from home environment.
The Home Care Registered Manager Award
Georgina Bakopoulou, Shine Partnerships
Georgia and her dedicated team are moving away from traditional models of care, working in innovative ways to support people with mental health problems and forensic behaviour. Her work in introducing self managing teams and employment opportunities for this marginalised group is inspiring!
The Dignity in Care Award
Nicolas Keemew, Priory Adult Care
Nicolas’ enthusiasm is infectious! He has adopted an innovative and creative approach to delivering dignity through person centred care to his service users, promoting independence and wellbeing. There are no barriers in making his service users wishes come true!
The Dementia Carer Award
Tracy Mansfield, Bluebird Care Croydon
Tracy has overcome personal difficulties to provide excellent person centred care for her service users. She is compassionate and dedicated and is a true asset to the care sector. Well done Tracy!
The Care Team Award
Precious Homes
The team had been developed to show true person centred care. They have a clear goal, passion for their job, empathy with residents and fit together like a glove. They gave amazing examples of how the team had taken on the wishes of their residents to the extent that Barry the Lizard is recognised in the house!
The Care Home Activities Co-ordinator Award
Helen Abbot, Avery, Birchwood Grange
Helen’s passion is evident and her story is inspirational. As a former relative, turned activity organiser, Helen’s unique experience has led her to transform the home. She has adopted a holistic approach to activity planning that brings in every member of staff to give each resident a bright and engaging day.
The Ancillary Worker Award
Irene Ferrier, Advinia Healthcare Ltd
Irein is a key asset to a very well run home. Her contribution to the lives of residents brings joy and happiness on a daily basis. Well done Irein!
The Care Trainer Award
Robert Hammond, Four Seasons Healthcare
Robert’s specialist knowledge and experience has given him great credibility as a care trainer. He has demonstrated a passion and devotion to developing the skills of individuals at all levels in the care profession.
The Care Innovator Award
Sheela Antony, Chosen Care Group
Sheila developed an idea to avoid lone working. She has created a network of local teams who are able to work together, giving a consistent care approach to clients and enabling a good work home life balance for staff.
The Frontline Leaders Award
Kim Keohane, Bluebird Care Croydon
Kin’s passion and enthusiasm for the leadership and mentoring of her team is self-evident. She shows colleagues, by example, how care should be delivered through practical support, guidance and training. Her positive ‘can do’ attitude towards delivering care at the front-line is inspirational for the large team she leads.
The Home Care Co-ordinator Award
Surya Shrestha, Chosen Care Group
Surya has demonstrated a dedication to the care sector ensuring service users are best matched to receive outcome focussed, person centred care. He is a true professional and a credit to his organisation.
The Care Assessor/Care Planner Award
Mentor Aliu, Home Instead
Mentor is passionate about person-centred care and ensures a high standard of care is always delivered right from the beginning when completing an assessment. He always strives to put the service users’ needs first.
The Putting People First/Personalisation Award
Dawn Baker and Simona Vitale, Dorton College of FE for the Vision Impaired
This team enables aspirations of individuals staring out in life to live their lives without limits. They train their staff and the outside world to empower individuals to live with enough support to be
independent young adults. Inspirational!
The Good Nurse Award
Uzma Kamran Inayat Bhatti, Barchester
Uzma showed great passion for nursing and for the vulnerable people she cares for. She leads by example and is a well regarded mentor for other staff.
The Palliative Care/End of Life Award
Melissa Layton Kim Tuckwell & Team, Certitude
Melissa and her team are truly inspirational. Their dedication and compassion to support people at end of life was moving. They have the special qualities needed in this area of work.
The Outstanding Contribution to Social Care Award
Alnur Dhanani, Chairman, Carebase
Alnur became a partner in Carebase following his father going into a care home. Alnur had a mission to in-still compassion, love and acknowledgement in the care home. He wanted people to treat his father as a person rather than a dependent . He wanted stimulation, life and excitement and for his father not too be a person with an illness.
Once Alnur became a partner at Carebase he was able to start putting all of these things into place. He said he wanted love, compassion and humility to exist like air.
Alnur made it his mission to give the carers permission and encouragement to express their genuine, deep, compassionate and caring nature. To simply be the kind and loving people they are. This mission has seen Carebase win the title of Care Employer in the past.
What makes Carebase unique is the deep compassion and professionalism that they bring to their residents, their families and each other every single day and every single moment, even when its really hard to do.
A well deserved winner of the Outstanding Contribution to Social Care Award, congratulations Alnur.