The Great East Midlands Care Awards are part of the Great British Care Awards, a series of 9 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.

Sponsored by Access Health and Social Care, sector support also includes Care England, The Department of Health, The National Care Forum, The Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE) and the Voluntary Organisations Disability Group (VODG), 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 East Midlands Care Awards will go through to the final at Birmingham’s ICC on 8th March 2019.

Gina Smith – West Hallam (Ashmere Derbyshire)

Gina was placed in a service that was inadequate and required improvement. Communication breakdown amongst professionals and staff hit rock bottom and teams’ morale was zero. Gina put in place goals and communication systems which turned the service around in 6 months to ‘Good’. Staff received awards from company’s appraisal system and thanks from Gina – they call her their missing piece to their puzzle. Gina states “I don’t class it as a job its my life. I genuinely love helping people feel happy and content.”