Thursday 14th November saw over 300 of the very best in social care attended a glittering awards ceremony at Gosforth Park, Newcastle, for the finals of the Great North East Care Awards, where the category winners were announced.
The Great North East Care Awards are part of the Great British Care Awards, a series of 10 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 for the events includes Care England, The Department of Health, The National Care Forum, The Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE) and the Alzheimer’s Society, as well as local authorities and other commercial organisations.
There are a range of 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 North East Care Awards will go through to the final at Birmingham’s ICC on 20th March 2020.
The winners of the Great North East Care Awards, together with the judge’s comments are detailed below:
The Care Home Employer Award
Crown Care
A family run business that puts the staff and clients at the heart of what it does. Crow Care has very strong community links and offers a range of benefits to support staff.
The Home Care Employer Award
Bluebird Care Gateshead
Passionate and engaged with a clear focus on delivery an excellent employee experience. Person centred; innovative care is at the heart of everything they do.
The Care Home Worker
Catherine Khan, Community Integrated Care
Catherine demonstrated the achievements that she has supported other to have. She has gone above and beyond to help her service users. She has encouraged several service users to lose weight and even joined slimming world herself to support them with this.
The Home Care Worker
Michael Smith, New Prospects Association
Michael’s passion for his work shone through and it is evident that he wants to make a difference. Michael has supported his client to achieve his goals and have new experiences.
The Care Home Newcomer
Zoe Smith, Anchor
In a short space of time Zoe has demonstrated great compassion and dedication to her role. She is a shining star in the sector and a wonderful asset.
Home Care Newcomer Award
Mehdi Mohensi, Merit Homecare
Mehdi moved from Iran to the UK and was inspired to work in social care to give something back to his community. Medi has shown incredible empathy for the people he supports and goes above and beyond in providing person centred support and promoting wellbeing. He really is an inspiration!
The Care Home Registered Manager
Louise Connell, Akari Care
Louise is an inspiration to her staff encouraging and enabling them to achieve their own goals, to improve the lives of the residents and promote wellbeing and smiles!
The Home Care Registered Manager
Caroline Adams, Riverside Group
Caroline demonstrated real examples of understanding what it meant to service users and families to experience care within their own homes. She also demonstrated improvement to service users’ lives through some wonderful intergenerational programmes.
The Care Home Cook/Chef
Darren Wilson, Crown Care
Darren joined the care sector to make a difference. He has a flexible approach to meet residents’ needs, care and home activities, going the extra mile to support colleagues and cover shifts.
The Dignity in Care Award
Steven Baldwin, Burlington Care
Steven is someone who has experienced at first hand the need for dignity in care and puts this at the forefront of his day job. Steven demonstrated outstanding examples of providing dignity in care and goes out of his way to raise standards from colleagues.
The Dementia Carer Award
Charlotte Field, Nurtured Care
Charlotte’s passion, empathy and dedication to her service users shone through. She gave some great, innovative examples of how she promotes independence and wellbeing for people living with dementia and always goes the extra mile. Inspirational!
The Care Home Team Award
School Close, Community Integrated Care
The team showed great inspiration, passion and enthusiasm. They were able to explain effectively the differences they made to the service users they support. Clear winners!
The Home Care Team Award
Joanne Kerr, Prioritising People’s Lives
Passionate about providing innovative, flexible, person centred care, Joanne and her team motivate and support one another to support services users and their families.
The Care Home Activity Organiser
Martin Foster, Akari Care
Martin is an inspiration. He is not just an Activity Coordinator for his service users, he’s the activity coordinator for his whole community. Martin involves the community to ensure his residents get what they need plus more!
The Ancillary Worker Award
William Anderson, Beechwood Care Home
Anthony sees his role as a Maintenance Worker as a way of involving some of the residents and promoting wellbeing and independence. He goes above and beyond to make residents feel valued and have a purpose, especially to those younger residents with brain injuries
The Workforce Development Award
Carl Sharp, Keyfort Group
Coming from a military background Carl’s passion for raising standards in social care shone through. He works in partnership with other organisations and his training programme has benefited the wider social care workforce.
The Care Innovator Award
Tees Alive, CIC
Tees Alive is all about encouraging inclusion within the community for their service users. The have established a new partnership with Middlesbrough FC in order to host football coaching on a weekly basis, giving purpose and motivation to their members.
The Care Home Frontline Leader Award
Anthony Base, Anchor Trust
Antony leads by example, motivating his team to deliver quality person-centred care. Passionate and committed – an inspirational care professional.
The Home Care Frontline Leader Award
Victoria Hook, Keyfort Group
Victoria demonstrated brilliant qualities of a frontline leader. She leads by example and is an inspirational role model for the team she leads.
The Home Care Coordinator Award
Paula Oumaouche, Bluebird Care North Tyneside
Paula was inspirational. Her passion for her role and extending this out of work was exemplary. She showed dedication with a true genuine focus on service users.
The Putting People First/Personalisation Award
CIC Pineview, CIC
The service has long standing staff who were passionate, caring and driven. The sky was the limit for the complex individuals supported and there was innovation to break down barriers and achieve more.
The Palliative Care/End of Life Award
Blossom Home Care Team
It was evident that Blossom Home Care are willing to go the extra mile for their clients. They have a wealth of knowledge they share with colleagues as best practice management and the support to staff is a high priority.
The Good Nurse Award
Amanda Brownlie, MRS
Amanda is extremely passionate with a focus to deliver person centred care ensuring that dignity and respect are at the forefront regardless of clinical needs. Amanda is driven and brings excitement to those around her thinking outside of the box to promote inclusion.
The Housing with Care Award
Tracey Godfrey, Sanctuary Supported Living
Tracey’s passion and enthusiasm for her role and clients is hugely evident. Simply put, Tracey, its not about her, its about those she supports.
The Care Assessor Award
Annie Hunter, Home Instead Senior Care
Annie is passionate about wanting to make a difference to peoples’ lives bringing back memories through researching individual histories. Annie loves her role, promoting choices and creating person centred care whilst still matching staff to meet the needs of each individual.
The Unpaid Carer Award
Tom Harrison, Larchwood Care
Tom was a volunteer at Soweby House, part of Larchwood Care. Despite living with mild autism Tom too to volunteering at incredibly well.
He quickly struck up a lovely rapport with residents and staff and we all really enjoyed his company. Tom never shied away from a job and turned his hand to everything, from distributing meals and cups of tea to even getting his head around the paper work.
Tom also embraced the activities programme and helped out at any opportunity. Staff and residents at Sowerby House have become very fond of Tom and will miss him not been around. We all wish him well for his exciting new future.
The Outstanding Contribution to Social Care Award
Fiona Leggott, Managing Director Blossom Home Care
Fiona set up Blossom Home Care in 2015 with her husband John. She previously worked as a district nurse and continues in practise at one of the region’s leading general hospitals. Fiona said she founded the business on offering the very highest standards of care of the kind we would want to provide for our own parents.
Lets celebrate social care and help it get the recognition it deserves