Team of the Year, Adult Services

Leicester City’s West Locality Team 3 cover a complex constituency, with sex work, drug use and homelessness among the issues they come into contact with. But with a ‘coal face’ approach at the heart of their work, and a determination to address social injustice, they are effecting significant change in the lives of some of the most vulnerable adults.

The team’s approach is rooted in strengths-based practice and they work hard to build positive relationships with service users, patiently working alongside them for as long as it takes to bring about positive outcomes. In one case, for example, the team supported a service user with cerebral palsy – whose home had been overtaken by substance users – to move to more suitable accommodation and re-establish themselves in the community.

Another notable achievement is how the team have worked collaboratively with other agencies to achieve better outcomes for service users. This includes reducing the number of appointments service users have to attend with different agencies, after staff identified that this was a considerable barrier to people accessing the support they need.

As one of the judges commented, this is a team of passionately driven social workers who, with the sole intention of bettering people’s lives, are doing great work.