The Blithering Celebrating Success Awards are always eagerly anticipated. Every November, they recognise the commitment and dedication of people who put other people at the heart of everything they do before going the extra mile in their shoes.
They also reflect the passionate belief of the organisers, Spume Media, in an awards-led approach to healthcare improvement science.
This year the ceremony took place in the opulent surroundings of the West Churlish cricket pavilion.
After dinner the actor who played Barry in EastEnders – back for a second year mainly for reasons of affordability – spent 45 minutes building on the success of last year’s jokes before handing over to Councillor Alan Spume to present the awards.
The leader of the local authority spoke eloquently about the purpose of the awards. “Every well led organisation needs to say thank you to its hard-working staff at least once a year,” he said.
He paid a heartfelt tribute to those behind the scenes “without whom there could only be losers”.
“These awards are a testament to the comms teams who work tirelessly and often without scruple to complete the entry forms, as well as the managers who refuse to let non-achievement get in the way of success,” he said.
Councillor Spume also addressed the awards’ critics.
“I know some people say that schemes such as these reward mediocrity, but is that such a bad thing? If you don’t encourage people to dare to be mediocre, how can you persuade them to take their next steps on the road to excellence?”
Councillor Spume concluded by thanking all the organisations that had “sponsored” tables for the event and reminded them that up to 3% of the proceeds would go to community projects.
“Thanks to you,” he said, “we’re all winners.”
Your winners in full
The judging panel, chaired once again by Sir Trevor Longstay, included several leading lights of the Blithering ICS, including medical director Dr David Rummage, acting head of possibility Mandy Shanks, deputy director of actualisation Derek Armitage, transformation director Bev Heaver and head of thought leadership and proactive cascading Martin Plackard.
Place-based Person-centric Integration Initiative of the Year – This award went to GoWestBlithering for their Empowering Older Age scheme, a co-production by the library and the gardening club with support from the CCG and a local funeral provider. GoWestBlithering also won Place of the Year.
Framework, Resource or Tool of the Year – Blithering CCG was a worthy winner for its suite of online portals where commissioners, providers and stakeholders can search for proven best-practice frameworks, resources and tools. The judges were particularly impressed by the Value Matrix, which allows new tool ideas to be evaluated in real-time and an Excel-based companion tool called the High-level Strategic Needs Index. The HSNI uses hard and soft criteria to produce a final weighted value expressed as one of three coloured heart emoticons.
Commending the CCG’s work, category expert Martin Plackard said: “Don’t be fooled by its apparent simplicity. This heralds a new era of evidence based decision making underpinned by high quality graphics”.
The Transforming Patient Experience Innovation of the Year – The winner was Blithering Community Trust for its Total Respect app, which allows patients to record how respected they feel at every stage of their experience journey.
Digital Exemplar of the Year – This was won by Blithering University Hospitals Foundation Trust with its new patient records system. Although the £150m project had not gone live by the entry deadline, the judges noted the “credible implementation plan” and the trust’s accelerated target of partial interoperability with GP systems by 2026/27.
System Leader of the Year – The judges said that choosing a winner in this category had been harder than ever, but that after several minutes of deliberation they decided that the outstanding candidate was Sir Trevor Longstay. This is the eleventh year in succession that Sir Trevor has won the award. He said he was “more humbled than surprised”.
Awards editor: Julian Patterson
julian.patterson@networks.nhs.uk
@NHSnetworks
Reproduced at thetrainingnet.com by kind permission of Julian Patterson.
