Winner: Tracey Hilditch, The Wellbeing Service 

This year Tracey was diagnosed with melanoma but has not let this affect the way she works. Tracey has continued to come to work with a smile and a positive attitude and hasn’t let her diagnosis change her work ethic. She has remained professional with her clients, been honest with her colleagues about her feelings, but also has continued to be her happy, bubbly, funny self, and is also there for her other colleagues. While going through this, she has continued to show courage and kindness to her other colleagues, she is supportive, kind and caring and without fail has put how she has felt to one side to help others. Tracey shows excellent commitment and always shows up to training, gets on with anything new and consistently works hard to improve the service we are running, while building great relationships with clients.

Shortlisted

Ben Cook, Unity Community Primary 

Ben has been a teacher at Unity Community Primary for the past 3 years and has grown from strength to strength. Last year Ben was not afraid to make the move from Year 4 to Year 6. He has quickly adapted to a new curriculum with a stressful deadline of Year 6 SATS alongside the challenging behaviour of pre-teens facing the transition to high school. Ben is a caring teacher who can establish positive relationships with his class and colleagues and has recently been developing his leadership skills as History and Geography lead. He is a well-respected, popular member of staff who will always be remembered for his Emmeline Pankhurst impression. Next year, Ben will take on the role of Writing Lead, which will require even more courage that we know he will display!

Pippa Kerr, Be Well 

Pippa embodies what it means to be ‘courageous’ as she brings her all to support the young people she works. Pippa works with 13–25-year-olds in the most deprived neighbourhoods in North Manchester with their mental wellbeing. This is a new role, not just for Be Well, but for the Big Life, and she really does not let anything phase her. Pippa works to maintain strong relationships with our partners and is always looking at innovative ways to engage the young person and their family, and ensuring we are offering equitable opportunities. Neurodiversity is a big passion for Pippa, transforming the way she delivers sessions to make them accessible for individuals, which involves creativity. Pippa has also delivered training to the wider Be Well service to help support our adult coaches in working more effectively with 18-25 year olds and training in low level mental health techniques to effectively bridge the gap for young people on waiting lists.

Nominations

Be Well: Nina Valvi; Pippa Kerr
Big Issue North: Alice Collins
Group Services: Bronte Schiltz
Living Well Rochdale: Anam Habib; Claire Hesbrook; Hina Nazir; Michelle Worrall; Ryan Whitworth; Shameem Nazir
Living Well Tameside: Brenda Gutu; Claire Rooney
Longsight Family Hub: Jakiy Nessa; Kirsty Moore; Kanthar Singh; Saiqa Akhtar
Talking Therapies (Eastern Cheshire): Becky Harvey; Cara Dootson
Talking Therapies (Heywood, Middleton and Rochdale): Micheal Jones
Talking Therapies (Stockport): Natalia Mejer
The Wellbeing Service: Kerry Kelly; Tracey Hilditch
Unity Community Primary and Nursery: Ben Cook; Josh Kerr; Lisa Cunningham
Wellbeing in Prisons: Sue Smith

Winner: Nazik Hamed, Be Well

Nazik uses her creative talents to put together the Be Well Magazine, as well as content for social media. The magazine has been a fantastic way to showcase the work happening across the Be Well service and share this with Be Well’s partners across the community including Health Development Coordinators, GP’s, Clinical Directors and more. Nazik works incredibly hard to facilitate this, as well as handling submissions from the teams across Be Well, to produce an outstanding magazine which does the service proud. Alongside this, Nazik also coordinates Be Well’s community events and is always on hand to fly the Be Well Flag!

Shortlisted

Suzy Schwenk, Energise Centre

Suzy has consistently demonstrated exceptional creativity and innovation in her work as a Community Development Worker. Her approach to design and her ability to think outside the box have resulted in a series of excellent projects that have not only delighted our service users but have given them new skills and helped improve their overall wellbeing and happiness. These projects include the Grow Together Gardening Group and Taste Buds. Suzy also creates promotional content and organises wellbeing fairs in an effort to attract more people to the centre. Suzy does all this while delivering her day-to-day work of wellbeing activities to help Salford residents live happier and healthier lives, whilst being creative in her approach.

Genna Spiteri, Be Well

Genna is so creative in every aspect of her role, she leads the way with community engagement wherever she goes including some recent creative ideas around engaging with people experiencing homelessness. She recognised that services can be difficult to access so reached out to Lifeshare, a homeless charity in Manchester, to provide once a month drop-in support, resulting in successful outcomes. Genna has also created mental wellbeing resources to help young people and has pioneered ‘walk and talk’ sessions. Genna recently worked with a young person who stopped attending school. However, through her creative approach the client has built confidence and is planning to start college as a result. Genna is also passionate about equitable access, using visual prompts to help non-verbal clients with our assessment questions and doing joint sessions with other professionals to provide a ‘warm welcome’ for the client into service.

Nominations

Be Well: Genna Spiteri; Nazik Hamid; Pippa Kerr
Community Voice
Energise Centre
Group Services
Living Well Rochdale
Longsight Family Hub
Talking Therapies (Eastern Cheshire)
Talking Therapies (Heywood, Middleton and Rochdale)
The Wellbeing Service

Winner: Rebekah Cheshire, Big Issue North

As part of Rebekah’s role as fundraising officer, having the ability to reflect on the things that are or aren’t working, while staying clear headed and being honest with yourself is key.

Each year, targets are set for each ‘line’ of fundraising income and the great skill that Rebekah has is not just with keeping up with trends, successes and challenges, but using that information to make future decisions. Despite Rebekah’s best efforts, there are some areas that haven’t paid dividends, but Rebekah is honest enough to reflect on those and decide where there is an opportunity to put more effort in, while in others she recognises that this is simply not a viable funding option and focus her efforts elsewhere. Rebekah’s approach leaves no room for sentiment or ‘vanity projects’, but instead allows us to maximise our income through honest, calculated consideration and be ahead of our target for income, like we are this year!

Shortlisted

Marie Flaherty, Living Well Rochdale

Marie’s role at Living Well Rochdale as a chatter is to call lonely and isolated people to chat to them and encourage them to connect with their community and services. Marie always goes above and beyond and will often continue to support clients out of work as a champion too. Marie is very honest and will not shy away from fighting for her clients and calling out services when they have not met a client’s needs. She is the epitome of ‘never give up’, and has had many successful examples of getting services, particularly housing for very complex clients that had been let down by the system, and she will often speak up in Team meetings, where she feels that we can improve how we work.

Niamh Horner, Group Services

Niamh has demonstrated honesty in navigating personal challenges while maintaining high work standards and fulfilling her apprenticeship responsibilities. Her openness and commitment to her role are truly inspiring. She has played a key part in improving processes in the communications team, contributing to a higher quality of work. Niamh actively seeks feedback, embraces learning opportunities, and consistently exceeds expectations. This is evident in her apprenticeship, where she has performed above her targets, reflecting her dedication to both personal and professional growth.

Nominations

Energise Centre: Tom Mullen
Group Services: Niamh Horner; Rebekah Cheshire
Living Well Rochdale: Marie Flaherty; Michelle Worral
Longsight Community Primary School: Laura Steel
Longsight Family Hub: Diane Stephenson
Talking Therapies (Eastern Cheshire): Antonella Mezzasalma; Kim Diane Douglas; Paula Albiston
Talking Therapies (Heywood, Middleton and Rochdale): Cherelle Stewart; Penny Hinchcliff
Talking Therapies (Stockport): Mike Bradbury
The Wellbeing Service: Tracey Hilditch

Winner: Dewi Evans, Unity Community Primary

Dewi took on the leadership of PE at school this year and has done an outstanding job. He started an after-school football club that has been popular with pupils, and the children are eager to be a part of the team. This has led to improved behaviour and a new sense of belonging and purpose in terms of sports. Additionally, due to Dewi’s fantastic work ethic and commitment, he secured a partnership with Manchester United which was no easy feat. This partnership will include a range of opportunities including high-level coaches, opportunities to meet players, specialised coaching workshops (covering topics like mental health and encouraging girls into sports) and much more. Dewi has been an inspiration to the children at Unity this year. He has fought for our children to get involved in more sport as he understands the importance it has for our community.

Shortlisted

Cara Duffy, Talking Therapies Eastern Cheshire

Cara is an inspirational person, not only in her role as a senior PWP, but also as a friend and an ally. She always shows how much she cares about her work and inspires others to do the same. Cara has overcome extremely difficult personal experiences and has become an even stronger person because of them. She is an incredibly valued member of the team and shows genuine care for her colleagues. Cara recently completed a 100km trek, raising nearly £3000 for ‘Coppafeel’ charity. She is incredibly resilient, but balances this with compassion, care and a sense of humour. This highlights just how inspiring Cara is – she has never faltered in her work and has continued to do a fantastic job. She is a true inspiration to us all! She has always been honest and open about her grief and the way she conducts herself gives hope to others.

Shazia Kazmi, Living Well Rochdale

Shazia works as a Living Well Chatter where she calls lonely and isolated people to have a chat and help them to connect with their community. She always goes the extra mile to support clients. However, Shazia is aware of professional boundaries and works well within them. She has had several safeguarding incidents that she has always dealt with professionally, while maintaining the trust of the client. Shazia had previously been a client of the Living Well team due to suffering with anxiety. She then became a community champion where she connected residents to services for around 10 years, all while being on her own journey with Living Well. She has recently covered the project support role where her knowledge of local support is second to none, ensuring that clients get the right support.

Nominations

Be Well: Aishah Rani; Dan Aris; James Sweeney; Jo Campbell; Jon Shepherd-Smyth; Suraj Singh-Digwa
Clinical Quality and Risk Team: Victoria Vickers
Community Voice: Cara McFarlane
Energise Centre: Amy Smyth; Gina Hine
Group Services: Rebecca Gibbons; Vicky Vickers; Amina Oduntan
Living Well Rochdale: Adele Beswick; Jon Henderson; Juliet Whalen; Marie Flaherty; Michelle Duffy; Nicola Keogh; Riley Clennell; Sanya Karim; Shazia Kazmi
Living Well Tameside: Claire Rooney; James O’Hara; Laura Nickson
Longsight Family Hub: Rukshana  Ahmed; Jakiy Nessa; Jessica Verity; Laura Steel; Zoula Lechareas
Manchester Centres (Kath Locke, Zion and Wesley): Donovan Williams; Elaine Barrett
Talking Therapies (Eastern Cheshire): Cara Duffy; Emily Murphy; Lauren Solomon
Talking Therapies (Heywood, Middleton and Rochdale): Eve Foster; James Flemming; Sarah Hellewell; Stephen Kasiuk
Talking Therapies (Manchester): Louise Chapman
Talking Therapies (Stockport): Caitlin O’Connell; Danielle Rowlinson; Mike Bradbury
Talking Therapies (Trafford): Nicola Mungroo
The Wellbeing Service: Emma Turner
Unity Community Primary and Nursery: Dewi Evans; Olivia O’Toole; Sigourney Rourke

Winner: Isha Braithwaite, Living Well Rochdale

Isha is the first point of contact for over 100 volunteers. She always remains calm and caring, going above and beyond to help people find solutions. She is very thoughtful with her fellow colleagues and brings her energy and light to the office, even on the busiest days, being a good listener and making people feel at ease. Isha is a valued member of the team, with her energy and thoughtfulness making a huge difference to the service and the champions. She will always go the extra mile for clients to make sure they get the support they need, even if our service isn’t right for them. She doesn’t let a client ‘go’ until she is sure that they are getting the right support.

Shortlisted

Faiza Butt, Longsight Family Hub 

Faiza embodies thoughtfulness through her work with a large number of families throughout the Longsight Outreach Programme and the Save the Children Parent Voice. These projects have reached families who often find there are a number of barriers to accessing help. Faiza was able to connect people to the Family Hub and ensure that the whole family was supported. There have been times where Faiza has been supporting families in crisis when there was no one else to turn to, and Faiza was not willing to leave until they were settled in a place of safety with a plan for the next week. Faiza understands that she can’t solve everyone’s problem, but she never shies away from trying.

Josh Kerr, Unity Community Primary 

Josh is dedicated to nurturing and supporting all children under his care. He has created a classroom atmosphere where every child feels valued and empowered to succeed, supporting the unique needs of each child in his class and harnessing their potential. Josh recently took on the role of a union representative, becoming a vocal advocate for the rights and interests of his colleagues, providing invaluable support to ensure the wellbeing and professional development of everyone at Unity. His conduct as a supportive colleague, union representative, and nurturing educator has been second to none. He has done all of this despite dealing with some significant staffing challenges throughout the year.

Nominations

Be Well: Ben Rydings; Calum Awcock; David Doran; Genna Spiteri; James Sweeney; Joe Barret; Lee Stapleton
Energise Centre: Amy Smyth
Group Services: Jess Corbett; Julia Forrester; Loz Housden; Rebecca Gibbons
Living Well Rochdale: Isha Brathwaite; Sharon Pearson
Living Well Tameside: Tina Lee
Longsight Family Hub: Rukhsana Ahmed; Faiza Butt; Jessica Verity; Kirsty Moore; Sakeena Raza; Nasreen Khan
Talking Therapies (Eastern Cheshire): Callam Gorman; Helen John; Rosemary Robinson; Sophie Mazari; Vicky Aaku
Talking Therapies (Heywood, Middleton and Rochdale): Cherelle Stewart; David Lee; Eve Foster; James Fleming; Louisa Parish
Talking Therapies (Manchester): Edyta Starzynska
Talking Therapies (Stockport): Caitlin O’Connell; Mike Bradbury
The Wellbeing Service: Cora-Leigh Foran; Kerry Kelly
Unity Community Primary and Nursery: Ben Cook; Eliza Henry; Joan Francis; Josh Kerr

Winner: Zoula Lecharaes, Longsight Community Primary

As a reception class teacher, Zoula consistently demonstrates exceptional commitment to inclusivity and equality. Her classroom represents children from diverse cultural, religious, and racial backgrounds, and she ensures that each child feels respected and valued. Zoula’s approach to teaching is grounded in fairness and impartiality where she maintains an inclusive environment with all students encouraged to celebrate their unique identities. Her dedication to treating every child with the same level of care and support is evident in her daily interactions. She attentively addresses each child’s needs and perspectives. Zoula not only teaches about diversity, but she actively models this through her practices, integrating cultural awareness into her curriculum, which helps to promote understanding and appreciation of different backgrounds.

Shortlisted

Donna Clarke, Energise Centre

Donna works to ensure that everyone benefits from health and wellbeing at the Energise Centre by providing information about different health campaigns through campaign boards on topics such as Alcohol Awareness Week, Hate Crime Reporting and Stop Smoking. She ensures that the boards are written in plain English, aren’t too clinical and include the details of other organisations in the area that provide help. Donna also noticed that children waiting for GP appointments in the centre were quite bored, leading to crying and sometimes disruptive behaviour. Donna wanted to help the children (and parents!) by providing books, so she got in touch with the local library and has built a relationship with them. They now provide free books for the children to read and take away. She also managed to secure colouring books and pencils, which has meant happier children and calmer parents.

Tom Ratcliffe, Living Well Rochdale

Tom is the champions coordinator for Living Well where he coordinates around 120 volunteers across the Rochdale borough. He ensures each volunteer feels valued and dedicates his time to supporting them with their development and signposting to support if needed. He has also developed easy ways to record the amazing work the champions do, making a difference to the outcomes recorded that enables the service to showcase the champions in the best possible light. Tom values all our volunteers equally and recognises their individual strengths and skills to maximise their volunteering with us and ensure that they are supported and happy. Since joining Living Well, he has expanded the walking scheme to include walks for a range of communities including those with mobility needs. Tom juggles the needs of our individual volunteers, makes time to support them, whatever their needs, and is immensely well liked by all.

Nominations

Energise Centre: Donna Clarke
Group Services: Rebecca Gibbons; Ted Ayre
Living Well Rochdale: Adam McCarthy; Jo Nicholls; Shabaz Ahmed; Sumiyya Zaynab; Tom Ratcliffe
Living Well Tameside: Brenda Gutu
Longsight Community Primary School: Zoula Lechareas
Longsight Family Hub: Lauren Killeen
Talking Therapies (Eastern Cheshire): Clare Rgerson; Rebecca Jones
Talking Therapies (Heywood, Middleton and Rochdale): David Lee; Ifemi Animashaun; Michael Jones; Sophie Perry
The Wellbeing Service: Cora Leigh Foran

Winner: Amber Bamford, Wellbeing in Prisons

Through Amber’s role of wellbeing coach for the Wellbeing in Prisons service, she has shown initiative and spoken up about issues that the team have faced during the process of getting embedded within the prisons. Amber has made fundamental changes with Excel which has been vital to supporting the team with their work, not just in her workplace but across all the prisons. Because of Amber’s work, she has allowed the team to have a clearer overview of their work and enabled them to further develop their service backed by evidence-based data, despite Amber saying this is a hobby, the team have said it’s a saviour!

Shortlisted

Emma Halawi, Living Well Tameside

Emma has recently taken on the role of Wellbeing Champion for Living Well Tameside where she has focused on organising events including an afternoon out for the team, allowing the team to bond and switch off. As well as organising events for the staff, Emma has organised a bake sale for Mental Health Awareness Week and a wellbeing walk which further benefits the service. Emma has committed to including partner colleagues in all the activities, helping to form healthy relationships which allows the teams to work well together. Emma also decided to brighten up the walls at the Katherine Street office by adding a staff wellbeing wall which features staff’s pets!

Hina Nazir, Living Well Rochdale

Hina is incredibly passionate about her role as Wellbeing Champion whilst working at Living Well Rochdale and uses her creativity to benefit the team’s wellbeing. From creating a safe space at Lock 50 which features positive affirmations to organising coffee catch ups for the team to share insight and catch up. Hina goes above and beyond to help everyone within the Rochdale office, she keeps the wellbeing cupboard stocked and will always take on board any suggestions to improve this including adding breakfast and lunch items for anyone who needs as well as adapting the cupboard based off the seasons. Hina also keeps the team going with little pick-me-ups throughout the day and organising events like walking football.

Nominations

Achieve: Sasha McFadden
Be Well: Calum Awcock
Energise Centre: Gina Hine; Kate Gillibrand
Group Services: Nathan Bibbon
Living Well Rochdale: Hina Nazir; Shameem Nazir; Zara Akhtar
Living Well Tameside: Emma Halwai
Longsight Family Hub: Rash Singh; Sam Singh; Sanah Alimahomed-Tilly
Talking Therapies (Eastern Cheshire): Anna Booth; Cara Duffy
Talking Therapies (Heywood, Middleton and Rochdale): Rory Myles
The Wellbeing Service: Emma Turner; Stephanie Walker
Unity Community Primary and Nursery: Georgia Patrick
Wellbeing in Prisons: Amber Bamford

Winner: The Bread and Butter Thing, Manchester Healthy Living Centres

The Bread and Butter Thing provides weekly groceries at a fraction of high street prices through their membership scheme. It’s run from the Zion Centre, and is delivered by a volunteer team, ably led by Anna Akthar, Community Engagement Worker at the centre.

Not only does the project get thousands and thousands of bags of food out for people at low prices, ensuring food dignity and food security for people across Hulme and Moss Side, it also has a dramatic impact on reducing food waste. By redistributing food that would otherwise be thrown away, in the last year alone, more than 50 tonnes of food was diverted from being wasted!

It’s amazing to find a project that combines a real social impact with a great environmental impact, and Anna, the team and every single volunteer should be proud of their efforts.

Shortlisted

Jenna Simister, Group Services

Jenna has been working tirelessly behind the scenes to get new boilers for a number of sites, some of which will be installed in the coming months. Yes, the boilers maybe at the end of their lives and are breaking down but working with our energy consultants we will be installing new more energy efficient ones. This is not just the case, Jenna has been looking at the energy consumption used around our estates and where possible is looking at ways to improve our carbon footprint.

Updating lighting, replacing or refurbing doors and windows to keep our carbon footprint low and working towards are net zero carbon target. Well done Jenna!

Living Well, Living Well Rochdale

The Living Well team have completed litter picks across the year. They have focused on the areas around Lock 50 where they are based as they had noticed a build up litter in the streets, around the canal and at the local basketball court.

Collectively the team have completed over 60 hours of litter picking and have collected up to 30 bags of rubbish. It’s been great to be out on the street chatting to residents and letting them know who we are and getting their appreciation.

Winner: Longsight Community Primary

Longsight Community Primary have excelled this year, despite the challenges they’ve faced as a small school. During this year, they were reaccredited for the UNICEF Rights Respecting Gold Award, which recognises that the school values the rights of the child and that their voices are heard. Longsight has also been awarded the Voice 21 Oracy Centre of Excellence, a three-year programme where all staff and children are immersed in oracy, and this has shown the impact that quality oracy can have on the children. They are one of only 21 schools in the UK to achieve the award and one of 44 across the world and are now committed to sharing this learning with schools across Manchester. Also, through collaborating with local schools, services and the family hub, more families have accessed more services and felt more confident to reach out for support.

Shortlisted

Living Well Tameside

The Living Well Tameside team have done outstanding work in transforming mental health services in Tameside. Despite challenges faced by the team, they have consistently delivered person-centered, holistic support for their service users. As well as maintaining strong partnerships with agencies, they use collaborative solutions to promote independence and mental wellbeing. Through their work, they have reduced waiting times, enhanced staff training, and introduced new roles like CMS and Wellbeing Champions. Through continuous learning and a commitment to improvement, the teams dedication to their community and staff is truly commendable.

Awareness Days Team, Group Services

The Awareness Days team: Sobia Iqbal, Laura Rogers, Niamh Horner, and Karen Welsh, focus on the recognition of cultural and religious awareness days to reinforce and embrace Big Life’s diverse workforce. The team place a huge emphasis on calling for lived experiences from staff across the group to ensure authentic voices stay at the centre of the content. They work to approach the right people, at the right times and keep a considerate tone throughout their work which has led to some incredibly powerful and impactful personal stories being shared. It’s a vital part of valuing the difference of our staff, learning from our shared experiences, and making sure that all Big Life staff can develop to best understand and celebrate their colleagues and the communities that we work with.

Nominations

Achieve
Be Well: CYP Team
Group Services: The Group Services ISO 27001 working group; The Business Planning Research Team (Paul Cookson, George Hatton); The Awareness Day Team (HR, People Wellbeing and Comms)
Living Well Rochdale: Community Champions
Living Well Tameside
Longsight Family Hub
Talking Therapies (Eastern Cheshire)

Winner: Talking Therapies Eastern Cheshire

Over the past year, the Eastern Cheshire Talking Therapies team has continued to work in partnership with the local authority to embed the Employment Support offer within the Talking Therapies pathway. This helps clients of East Cheshire to find work, remain in work or return to work. The team works alongside Employment Advisors from the council, through referring clients to them from Talking Therapies. The team had been excellent at embracing the offer and has referred 769 clients to the local authority with 88% of clients who use the pathway reporting successful outcomes. Recent feedback from a client who used the service said: “It helped me discover other options, allowed me to step back and see how far I’ve come, and be appreciative of the skills I have built”. Thanks to the exceptional partnership working, the pathway has made a real difference to the local community.

Shortlisted

Big Life Liverpool

Over the last year, the Liverpool Hub has seen significant growth and been able to expand its support to people all across Liverpool. They deeply embed the principles of the Big Life Way into their culture, working tirelessly to provide a range of interventions in areas including housing, drug and alcohol support, employment, and domestic violence. The staff work together to create a welcoming, trauma-informed environment for anyone who needs it. The hub works to be responsive towards the needs and skills of their service users, tailoring activities and support pathways to fit each individual. The team demonstrate courage, creativity, honesty, and inspiration as they learn from and adapt to challenges. The Liverpool Hub values diversity, treating both service users and team members as individuals, fostering an inclusive and supportive atmosphere.

Wellbeing in Prisons

The Wellbeing in Prison team, despite only starting in October 2023, have built the service up from the ground, building positive relationships and aligning with their partners. They have learned how to navigate the prison environment and are well respected, with the service being very well received. They have an excellent reputation in all of the prisons and regularly receive fantastic feedback. The service has even been recognised in the recent CQC report at HMP Styal, which is a testament to the great work that the team are doing. The team have worked very creatively when co-producing the programmes and work with a person centred, trauma informed approach and are thoughtful with the way they deliver and facilitate sessions, ensuring that everyone feels heard and supported. The service has totally transformed within 6 months into an amazing, fully functioning, well respected team who are continuously developing and responding to the needs of the prison and residents through the teams determination, integrity and professionalism.

Nominations

Young Person’s eTherapy: Nicola Mungroo; Stacy Gray
Community Voice: Liverpool Hub
Living Well Rochdale: Living Well Rochdale CVD Team; Oral Health – Kelly Nicholls
Longsight Family Hub: Longsight Community Primary; Longsight Community Primary Senior Leadership Team.
Manchester Centres (Kath Locke, Zion and Wesley): The Reception Team at Zion
Talking Therapies Eastern Cheshire
Talking Therapies Trafford
The Wellbeing Service
Wellbeing in Prisons: Wellbeing Coaches

Winner: Living Well Tameside

Living Well Tameside are a creative mental health team when it comes to supporting clients with complex, longstanding, and multi-layered biopsychosocial needs. The team helps to support Tameside and Glossop communities, through the Living Well model, helping them to access appropriate support using a strength and asset-based approach. The team are transparent, accountable and outcomes focussed – Living Well Tameside are solution focussed and hold each other to account. The team are continually changing and adapting to integrate and work alongside the wider system transformation to meet the ever-changing needs of residents. The Living Well Team treat people as citizens within communities rather than mental health clients and embrace the whole person.

Shortlisted:

Living Well Rochdale, Lipids Project

Throughout the last year, Sanya Karim and Mohammed Moheeb have been working to deliver a Lipids Optimisation Project in the borough of Rochdale. The project was aimed at providing community engagement work to help spread important health messages and encourage people in the community to take up health checks. Sanya and Mohammed have been able to deliver the health sessions in multiple languages and adapt resources as part of their learning and evaluation. The insight they’ve gained has also helped the NHS in understanding barriers and how to overcome them. Throughout their time working on this project, they have engaged with over 2000 people and are constantly adapting their approach based off feedback. They have made a huge impact on the community and built genuine trust by doing what they say and increasing referrals from south Asian residents into Living Well.

Volunteer Celebration Team, Group Services

The Volunteer Celebration Team, Charmaine Gregory-Schierenbeck, Gabe Murray and Mark Wheeler, helped to organise the Big Life volunteer celebration in the summer. After receiving feedback from previous years that the event could use a revamp, the team set about to make changes to the event allowing more time to focus on the impact the volunteer teams make. This included focusing more on videos to outline the work our volunteers do, and how grateful we are for their work. It was really clear that the changes came about as a result of great engagement with our volunteers, and the positive feedback we received from them after the event was a clear sign that listening and responding paid dividends!

Nominations

Achieve: Achieve Admin Team
Big Life Schools: Play Scheme Staff
Community Voice: Liverpool Support Hub
Group Services: The Volunteering, Comms and Design team (Charmaine, Gabe and Mark); HR
Living Well Rochdale: Living Well Rochdale; Lipids Project
Living Well Tameside 
Longsight Family Hub: Longsight Nursery; Longsight Family Hub – reception team and outreach teams
Talking Therapies (Heywood, Middleton and Rochdale)
The Wellbeing Service: The Wellbeing Team

Winner: Sanya Karim, Living Well Rochdale

Sanya is an outstanding employee who always goes the extra mile. Whatever challenge is thrown her way, she always happily accepts it and creates a solution to meet the needs of the community. She is a proactive and dynamic team member, with a keen eye for detail, who’s able to adapt her approach from engaging with the community one day to presenting to public health the next. She has attended events at over 15 local locations in the community to promote Living Well, organising successful health events that have received great feedback from the Mayor. As well as working on her own project, she is now working on creating resources for Rochdale in South Asian languages, allowing people to break the language barrier within services.

Shortlisted

James O’Hara, Living Well Tameside

James is a thoughtful and kind person. He has supported and assisted the development of the Living Well Tameside service during major changes. After developing his skills for a long time, James has become an excellent manager who completes all projects with passion. James has also risen to various challenges, adapting his managerial skills appropriately. He has been an absolute beacon of hope in the most challenging times within our service, but remained very positive, solution-focused, and kept all staff positive and motivated. James helped us not lose hope and focus as he continued to guide us to deliver a 5-star service to our clients. Above all James has been the IT champion in our service over the past year, James has gone above and beyond to support all staff, including external partners, offering support and helping continuously improve the system.

Susan Parker-Stone, Longsight Community Primary

Susan has led Oracy for the past three years at LCP and has grown it from strength to strength. She has fully embedded Oracy in all classes with remarkable outcomes, bringing other team members along, to ensure the best outcomes and life chances for every child in the school. Susan has worked tirelessly developing and implementing Oracy and has transformed the way that we listen to the views of our children, the participation in class, the deepening of vocabulary and an improvement in outcomes for the children. The commitment and work to embed this across the school has ensured pupils will develop their oracy skills with a lasting impact. As well as this, Susan was also required to cover staff absence in Year 6, supporting pupils during their SATS exams, driving results to be just short of national averages, demonstrating a can-do attitude with energy only Susan can offer.

Nominations

Be Well: Andy McSparran; Dan Aris; Jon Shepherd Smyth; Joseph Campbell
Big Life Homes: Hamid Laaouina
Clinical Quality and Risk Team: Hayley Street
Director Health and Wellbeing: Carly Milne
Group Services: All of the Finance team; Teresa Shellard
Living Well Rochdale: Juliet Whalen; Sanya Karim; Shazia Kazmi
Living Well Tameside: James O’Hara
Longsight Community Primary School: Rukhsana Ahmed
Longsight Family Hub: Leah Chikamba; Susan Parker-Stone
Talking Therapies (Eastern Cheshire): Cara Duffy; Rosemary Robinson; Teagan Wright; Vicky Aaku
Talking Therapies (Heywood, Middleton and Rochdale): Katie Suthers; Naheed Asif
Talking Therapies (Manchester): April Fitton; Charlotte Bishop; Danielle Baltazar
Talking Therapies (Stockport): Danielle Rowlinson
Talking Therapies (Trafford): Nicola Mungroo
The Big Life Schools: Keith Smith
The Wellbeing Service: Emma Turner; Kirsty Greenwood
Unity Community Primary and Nursery: Chloe Shields; Kirsty Ferris
Wellbeing in Prisons: Amber Bamford