By Charlotte Webster-
An award to recognise committed adult social care workers in line with NHS workforce awards has been launched today by the chief nurse for adult social care.
Professor Deborah Sturdy today outlined her commitment to recognise the outstanding contribution made by social care workers and nurses in England and their enormous range of skills, expertise and enduring compassion.
The awards will mirror the Chief Nursing Officer Ruth May’s awards for the NHS, and aim to celebrate nurses and care workers in adult social care who go above and beyond their everyday roles to provide excellent care, leadership and inspiration.
The awards will not be limited to registered nurses, but will be extended to include all carers across all care settings, including care homes.
Presented as gold and silver awards, they represent an important step towards bringing recognition in line with the NHS workforce and recognise the extraordinary commitment of the adult social care workforce.
The announcement comes a day after an application for entries for the annual social workers awards were announced.
Every year, a high number of social workers give their highly valued profession bad press through a host of misconduct, negligence, and incompetence. High workload and extreme burden has often been cited as reasons for short cuts or inadequate performance.
In the midst of all those challenges, distinguished professionals in social care are to be recognised.
Chief Nurse for Adult Social Care Professor Deborah Study said:
”The pandemic has shone a light on the exemplary efforts of our dedicated social care workforce, and I am committed to ensuring we recognise the selfless hard work they do day in and day out.
The social care workforce more than ever continues to demonstrate unwavering compassion, professionalism and dedication. Not only during the pandemic but every year.
I am extremely proud to present these awards to colleagues in social care which reflect those for colleagues in the NHS.
These individual awards recognise exceptional practice and care and rightly give recognition, acknowledgement and appreciation that those individuals deserve.
The awards come at an important time, to celebrate the huge contribution of the nursing and wider care workforce in the past year as well as building on the system-wide collaboration across health and social care we’ve seen during the pandemic.
This new award is the first of its kind for adult social care and is open to the workforce from all settings and parts of the sector.
The awards will be on an application basis and awarded throughout the year.
Nominations will be considered by a panel of NHS and adult social care chief nursing officers and adult social care sector representatives. The Chief Nurse for Adult Social Care aims to present the first award later this year.
The gold award will recognise outstanding achievements and performance demonstrated by a nurse or social care worker in their sphere of practice. This may be clinical practice, education, research or leadership. The award recognises the exceptional contribution by an individual with a distinguished career in nursing or social care.
The silver award recognises performance that goes above and beyond the expectations of the everyday role that the nurse or social care worker is expected to perform.
Again, this could be demonstrated in education, research, patient and carer experience, leadership, tackling diversity and health inequalities, and could be awarded to either an individual or a team.
The awards will not be limited to registered nurses and will be extended to include all carers across all care settings, not only care homes”.