2011 Winners

• Caroline Curtis - Children's Social Worker of the Year
• Anita Kapur - Team Leader of the Year - Adult's Services
• Kelly Hicks - Adult Social Worker of the Year
• Ellie Hal-Fead - Practice Teacher of the Year
• Adoption Team (Southend-on-Sea BC) - Team of the Year - Children's Services
• TOPAZ - Team of the Year - Adult's Services
• Celia Parker - Team Leader of the Year - Children's Services
• Janet Foulds - Overall Leader of Innovative Practice
• Ian Baker - Outstanding Lifetime Achievement Award

Celia is the Team Manager of a Looked After Children’s Team and is personally responsible for the care plans for 44 children. Team members describe Celia as a unique and inspiring leader. Having spent 30 years working in the social work domain, Celia’s knowledge base is vast; she consistently demonstrates an unquenchable desire to keep up to date with current research and is always open to sharing this with team members and other colleagues. 

Celia inspires team members to reach for extremely high standards by earning their respect and setting a tone of absolute professionalism. Celia’s commitment and dedication to social work can be summed up in the words of one of her team members “She is an inspiration to us all in the manner she delivers services and support to Social Workers as well as the children.  All her decisions and work are because of the passion and care she has for all the looked after children and wanting the best for them.”  Celia is truly loved by her team and respected by those families and professionals who meet and work with her.

The judges particularly liked the fact that Celia keeps up to date with current research and takes the time to share the information with her team. The judges felt that she was a very safe and reliable leader with a healthy work life balance. They also believe that she has created a great culture within the team and the use of evidence and testimonials support this.

Caroline Curtis is a committed and dedicated social worker working with children in care or at risk of going into care as well as with those going through the adoption process.  Caroline has a record of building excellent relationships with the families she is involved with and will work tirelessly to ensure the best possible outcome for the child and family alike.  

Described as “an angel” by one family she steered through a particularly difficult time, Caroline commands a great deal of respect and affection from all those she comes into contact with and clearly makes an enormous, as well as positive, difference to the families in her caseload.

The judges were particularly impressed by the testimonial from one of Caroline’s families where her hard work, patience and empathy turned a potentially devastating situation into a positive outcome for all concerned.  The judges took into account evidence of Caroline’s impact on many other service users and felt that her work is as example of outstanding professionalism in this challenging area.

Anita Kapur manages a team of social workers who administer the safe discharge of old, frail and disabled people from acute hospital wards (SWIFT – Social Work Initiated Fast Track).  Thanks to her professionalism and enthusiasm, Anita has transformed her team into a strong, stable and cohesive unit and has established excellent relationships with health colleagues in the hospitals concerned.    

Anita’s insistence on exceedingly high standards has resulted in an efficient, safe and outstanding service for this vulnerable group of people on their discharge from hospital where their dignity, choice and control are deemed to be of paramount importance.

The judges were delighted to pronounce Anita winner of this category because she managed to transform a team of locum staff from a variety of backgrounds with a diverse range of experiences into such a professional and effective team with a strong sense of identity.  The judges were impressed with the evidence of joint working between social workers and hospital staff, placing the service users at the centre of the assessment and planning process and the fact that the SWIFT team has met and exceeded all performance targets.

Kelly is an Independent Social Worker who has worked on a voluntary basis for the last year with a group of adults with mental health problems.  She has given hours of time, support and skills to enable them to become active within the community and to improve their own wellbeing.  The group now has over forty members and meets every week.

Kelly has earned the members’ trust and respect and changed the way they think about social workers in a positive way.  She led the group to receive the Great British Care Awards in the category of Putting People First - an amazing achievement and the first time that a service user group has received such an honour.  Kelly’s commitment to this group has resulted in a reduction of need for statutory involvement amongst members and many members now receive preventative support before situations escalate to crisis.

The judges were impressed with the passion and enthusiasm of this entry and the fact that Kelly was nominated by this group of service users in a notoriously poor area. They felt that she clearly met all of the judging criteria and that she is an inspirational role model.

For the last 20 years Ellie has worked at a family support centre which offers a wide range of preventative interventions for parents and children aged 0-18, where children are at risk of significant harm.  After completing a Practice Educator course in 2006, Ellie has successfully mentored nine students over four years whilst simultaneously managing a busy team.

Ellie’s dedication to student learning makes her an exemplary educator – she focuses on the application of social work theory, the development of key skills and integrates this with reflection, constructive feedback and student well-being.  Ellie sits on the Practice Educator Advisory Group using her extensive knowledge to advise on improving quality, procedure, and training.  The success of Ellie’s teaching is evidenced by the words of her students “excellent, expert, empathetic”.

The judges felt that this was a very robust entry with plenty of detail and supporting evidence to back up the nomination.  They felt that Ellie is an inspiring educator with a keen sense of professional responsibility towards the training of newly qualified social workers.  The judges felt that Ellie is a strong role model for future practice educators.

Southend Borough Council Adoption Service provides a comprehensive range of adoption services. The team consists of 6 social workers, 2 support staff and 1 student. Distributed leadership has resulted in good team spirit, high morale, low staff turnover and low sickness. 

Key achievements include the development of highly effective post-adoption support, most notably through “SPARKLES” – a ground-breaking adoptive parents’ group which helps adoptive parents understand their child and why difficult behaviour arises. The team has also established a new birth parent drop-in group and has set up a Letterbox system for effective and positive contact between adopted children and their birth parents.

The judges felt that the team used innovative techniques to address service user needs, they provided good examples of how and why the service user was benefitting and gave a strong flavour of the team overall. The judges were particularly impressed with the ‘SPARKLES’ case study and felt that the entry had successfully used supporting documents to provide substantial evidence.

TOPAZ (Team Offering People Advice & Support) has been in operation since 2009. The team consists of 2 social workers and an occupational therapist and its core aims are early intervention, preventative work and promoting people’s independence and wellbeing in the community.

TOPAZ reaches out to communities via various surgeries that are conducted within community organisations and faith groups. The team makes contact with hard to reach communities, some of which may not have traditionally accessed council services.  It also disseminates a variety of information and advises on safeguarding issues.

The TOPAZ team visits residential and nursing homes and talks to people who self-fund their care and may not have had any involvement with Adult and Community Services. TOPAZ has been chosen as the only London project to go forward as a DOH Social Work Practice Pilot site.

The judges felt that this team showcased imaginative work and was extremely focused upon the service user impact. They liked the way the team had used a core social work service and implemented it in an original way and the outcomes and successes were very clearly defined.

Celia is the Team Manager of a Looked After Children’s Team and is personally responsible for the care plans for 44 children. Team members describe Celia as a unique and inspiring leader. Having spent 30 years working in the social work domain, Celia’s knowledge base is vast; she consistently demonstrates an unquenchable desire to keep up to date with current research and is always open to sharing this with team members and other colleagues. 

Celia inspires team members to reach for extremely high standards by earning their respect and setting a tone of absolute professionalism. Celia’s commitment and dedication to social work can be summed up in the words of one of her team members “She is an inspiration to us all in the manner she delivers services and support to Social Workers as well as the children.  All her decisions and work are because of the passion and care she has for all the looked after children and wanting the best for them.”  Celia is truly loved by her team and respected by those families and professionals who meet and work with her.

The judges particularly liked the fact that Celia keeps up to date with current research and takes the time to share the information with her team. The judges felt that she was a very safe and reliable leader with a healthy work life balance. They also believe that she has created a great culture within the team and the use of evidence and testimonials support this.

Janet manages the Child Sexual Abuse Unit in Derby City which consists of a small group of social workers who work therapeutically with survivors of child sexual abuse.  Janet identified a need for this service and was instrumental in setting it up.  She has endlessly highlighted the benefits the team offers to children and young people who have experienced sexual abuse and tirelessly campaigns to maintain and develop the service.

Practice is close to Janet’s heart and after 36 years she is still very hands on and works with children and adults, sometimes for years, to give them the benefit of her experience, skill and understanding in helping them to survive abuse.

Described as a supportive and enabling manager who encourages her staff to further their training portfolio and to develop their skills as trainers, Janet is herself a well respected trainer. She is a fierce advocate of social work practice and has been on national and local TV and radio and has presented information to national and local politicians to highlight the key issues facing social workers and the support they need.

The judges were delighted to give this award to Janet because of her life long dedication to victims of child sexual abuse and her determination to set up and maintain a specialist unit to help sufferers.  The judges also felt that she has helped to raise awareness of social work and is a great advocate for the profession.

Ian has devoted most of his professional career to social work and specifically to campaigning for those with physical disabilities.   As Manager of the Physical Disability Team in Nottinghamshire, he developed and expanded the team and participated in pilots on outcomes-focused social work and then in Self-Directed Support.

During his long career Ian gained the respect of service users, carers and team members alike.  He worked tirelessly and creatively to set up complex care packages for profoundly disabled people, giving them choice, flexibility and control.   Described by colleagues as “an inspirational leader”, he always put the service user at the heart of his practice and pioneered the use of Direct Payments.  Ian spent the last couple of years of his career at County Hall in the Self-Directed Support project team, laying down policies and procedures for the future ensuring that these policies were based on social work experience.

Ian changed people’s lives. He impacted on service users and families, opening up for them possibilities that they had never dreamed of and he also changed the face of social work in Nottinghamshire by putting physical disability ‘on the map’.

The judges were impressed not only by the length of Ian’s career in social work and the excellence of his work and vision,  but also because of his dedication to people with physical disabilities and his determination to get the best possible outcomes for them.