Saturday 9th November saw over 500 of the very best in social care attended a glittering awards ceremony at The Hilton Hotel, Brighton, for the finals of the Great South East Care Awards, where the category winners were announced.
The Great South 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 South East Care Awards will go through to the final at Birmingham’s ICC on 20th March 2020.
The winners of the Great South East Care Awards, together with the judge’s comments are detailed below:
Care Home Employer
Belmont Healthcare
Belmont Healthcare are passionate about valuing, nurturing and developing their workforce and as such have an impressively low turnover. They are clearly dedicated to empowering their staff to deliver, innovative, high quality person centred care.
Home Care Employer
Bluebird Care Reading, Wokingham, Windsor, Maidenhead and Bracknell
Passionate and engaged with a clear focus on delivery an excellent employee experience. They involved their employees in re-imagining their business three years ago and are reaping the benefits of that. Excellent presentation with great images of their staff.
Care Home Worker
Simona Moise, Nellsar Care Homes
A trained nurse from Romania, Simona has worked as a care worker for 4 years. She oozes passion for her job and wants to make a difference to the lives of people with dementia.
Home Care Worker
Keely Ware, Portsmouth City Council
Keely showed exceptional dedication to her role and the people she supports. Keeley demonstrated a passion to deliver a high quality, personalised service; showing creativity, kindness and humour. We particularly loved the use of conga to help someone develop confidence in re-learning how to walk.
Care Home Newcomer
Amber Thorn, Summerlands Residential Home
Amber is a true ambassador for everything needed to take care to the next level. She is passionate, dynamic and insightful, with an inner drive to ensure that people with dignity and respect. She is a shining star and we can all feel content that our futures are in safe hands with people like Amber.
Home Care Newcomer
Charlotte Ethering, PCAS Kent Ltd
Charlotte has excelled in the sector in such a short space of time. She is passionate about delivering person centred care through a variety of settings. A true asset to the sector!
The Care Home Registered Manager
Josi George, Larchwood Care
Josi is a natural, kind and inspirational leader of a family home. He provides genuine heartfelt care alongside his team. He has a supportive approach to staff, residents and relatives who are all very lucky to have him as their manager and should be very proud of what he does.
The Home Care Registered Manager
Alison Worsfold, Hilton Nursing Partners
Alison impressed the judges with her professionalism and focus on providing best care. She is forward thinking and embraces the challenges of the complex service that is provided.
The Care Home Cook/Chef
Juliana Martins, TLC Care
Juliana’s work and dedication goes way beyond the kitchen. Inspired by her grandmother, she works to very high standards and her passion for people and cooking has led her to writing her own book. Person centred in every way – inspirational!
The Dignity in Care Award
Jordan Ellis, Porthaven
Jordan stood out in this category evidencing a strong, natural understanding and commitment to the dignity of the clients in her care. She felt privileged that she was part of their home.
The Dementia Carer Award
Victoria Nameth, Barchester
Victoria has applied her own life experiences to enhance her skills in supporting people living with dementia. She manages the challenges faced by people living with dementia through developing appropriate inter-personal relationships with those she supports.
The Care Home Team Award
THE ELS Team, The Huntercombe Group
The judges were blown away with the passion and enthusiasm of this team. They have brilliant ideas of how to make their patients lives enjoyable. They do different jobs with a smile and are very creative with activities in a security hospital. They demonstrated good team spirit, support each other and are very friendly.
The Care Home Activity Organiser
Helen Couldridge, Regal Care
We loved the variety of activities Helen had organised! She clearly demonstrated how the residents have a voice in what goes on in their home and how the activities are designed to be special, memorable and empowering for each person.
The Ancillary Worker Award
Luke Stanton McGee, Belmont Healthcare
Although Luke was very nervous his sense of humour and jolly personality shone through. A humble employee who obviously enjoys his job and is committed to develop himself to his full potential.
The Workforce Development Award
Trevor Sproat, Saga Care at Home
Trevor lives and breathes training and development for staff he works with. He provides the right level of support; he works as a carer to gain trust and brings training sessions to life. He is not afraid to make changes and not only trains his staff but looks after them and supports as well.
The Care Innovator Award
Carmella Martin, Aspire Home Carers
Carmella has a passion and inspiration to drive health and well-being for her staff, service users and families, and is inspirational and life changing. Her drive to highlight and support mental health well being in a new and innovative way made her a clear winner and something she should be proud of.
The Care Home Frontline Leader Award
Victoria Dladosu, Barchester
Victoria believes that to be a trusted leader you need to be approachable, knowledgeable and empower your staff. She demonstrated that a leader needs to know the organisation, the residents and the staff and be able to bring about change and to sustain it.
The Home Care Frontline Leader Award
Fiona Dianin, Peabody
A passionate manager who oversees multiple learning disabilities schemes. She leads by examples and motivates her staff to go above and beyond to provide person centred support.
The Home Care Coordinator Award
Emma McCrory, Platinum Care Solutions
Emma demonstrated the importance of teamwork and how to bond the team together. She shows ambition to be a registered manager and is realistic about growing the business, balancing supply and demand, to meet the needs of the service users.
The Putting People First/Personalisation Award
Rebecca Angel, Anchor
Rebecca displayed a passion for the sector by going above and beyond her role. Engaging in residents’ lives and supporting their wellbeing through several innovative activities.
The Palliative Care/End of Life Award
Valerie Nursing Home
The team at Valerie Manor were so passionate about ensuring their residents received a good death. Their whole ethos is about supporting the residents and their families at the end of someone’s life. Each member of the team is well supported, and this means everyone works together to deliver their wishes.
The Good Nurse Award
Daniel Sappor, The Huntercombe Group
Daniel has a sparkling personality. He is intuitive, very passionate, supportive and creative in what he does. He is very inspirational, enjoys helping the patients and his work colleagues. He is self-motivated to maintain his professional development and always willing to go the extra mile in order to achieve the best possible outcomes for his patients and the team.
The Housing with Care Award
St Bartholomew’s Court, Sanctuary Retirement Living
There was a unified enthusiasm the moment we met this team. They are constantly striving to do the best for their clients to ensure they can maintain their independence.
The Care Assessor Award
Alex Witton, Bluebird Care Reading, Wokingham, Windsor, Maidenhead and Bracknell
Alex was dedicated and driven to provide the best possible outcomes for people in the sector. She demonstrated a consistency in the approach to her assessments ensured continuity of care delivery.
The Unpaid Carer Award
Syliva Stock, Princess Christian Care Centre
In the words of the person who nominated Sylvia:
Sylvia Sock is an amazing volunteer for Princess Christian Care Home. When I first met Sylvia in 2013, I was really impressed by her personality and recognised the element of abundant compassion in her heart and in her words. She was a regular visitor to the care home because her husband was a resident living with dementia.
Being a retired Nurse who was previously practicing in the social care sector, her knowledge in dementia and her willingness to volunteer for our dementia awareness activities became very popular over the years.
Sylvia, a dementia expert is also a published author. One of her books “The Naughty Neurones”, describes hers and her husband’s journey through the course of dementia and is an extremely useful guide for dementia family carers.
She co-founded Friends of Princess Christian (FOPC), a non-profitable organisation within the care home and is currently serving as the secretary of the association. FOPC has brought relatives, residents and staff at Princess Christian Home together, to regularly meet and talk about making positive changes in the Home and hence to contribute towards enriching the lives of its residents.
Her vision is to build a larger community around our residents so that they do not feel segregated from the rest of the world. Under her eminent leadership, FOPC organises regular funding activities to support national charities too, like the World Alzheimer’s month.
She is always in the forefront of raising awareness of dementia and provides one to one sessions with families struggling to cope up with the condition on a regular basis.
Sylvia also runs a dementia café at the care home where relatives can meet her over a coffee to discuss their anxiety.
Sylvia is a volunteer who takes ownership of everything and everyone at home. Our residents love her like a member of their own family. She joins them for everything, from fun games, day trips and meals. Sylvia is very worthy of this special award.
The Outstanding Contribution to Social Care Award
Mark Butler, Director of Operations, PJ Care
In the words of the staff team who nominated Mark:
Mark Butler has dedicated his entire working career to helping and caring for others. From qualifying as a registered mental nurse in Kent, Mark moved and took up post in a mental health hospital in Brighton and Hove.
Dedicated to his profession and his patients, Mark quickly worked his way through the ranks and took up management positions. After a successful career in hands on care, Mark fulfilled many roles within the care sector, having responsibility for occupancy, operations and care team management. This culminated in a successful period of care home management, prior to joining PJ Care as the Operations General Manager.
Mark shows incredible kindness to both residents and staff and his tenacious drive for perfection within his team ensures they strive to deliver the very best care possible. He was promoted to Director of Operations four years ago and since he took up his new role, he has steered the company to good and near outstanding CQC reports across all PJ Care’s centres, has seen the company achieve Investors in People Platinum status in the Gold Standards Framework for end of life care and has this year seen the company included in the Sunday Times Top 100 Companies to work for.
Mark has a softly spoken and infectiously cheerful demeanour which inspires those who work for and with him and has a huge impact upon our residents. The care sector and PJ Care particularly, would not be what it is, without kind and generous people like Mark devoting their lives to it.
Lets celebrate social care and help it get the recognition it deserves