Success at the Health Service Journal Awards for BWC
Our Trust enjoyed a successful night at the annual HSJ Awards with our work as part of the Paediatric Accelerator Programme winning a coveted prize and the support we offer to all colleagues through our ‘NHS first of its kind’ Pregnancy Loss and Pre-Term Birth policy being highly commended.
Our innovative ‘Fight for all the Feels’ Peer Support Worker programme in our Mental Health Services, which is supported by our Charity, was also recognised as a finalist.
The big winners on the night were The National Paediatric Accelerator who picked up the Performance Recovery Award.
The Accelerator is a partnership of 10 of the largest Paediatric Trusts in England, who came together to deliver a £20m programme, funded through the £160m of the NHS’s national Accelerator programme, to drive COVID recovery, tackle health inequalities and deliver a £1m innovation project across each Trust. This highly successful project used shared data and learning between them and has helped to transform the Trusts, often allowing people to make changes they’ve wanted to make for a long time.
At BWC, this partnership has allowed us to make estates changes to speed up patient flow and continue our study into using virtual reality in patient treatment. The project has dramatically reduced the time to treatment and tackle the delays in children’s care caused by the pandemic, and is serving as a blueprint to others and it’s hoped it can be rolled out across the country.
Highly commended in the Staff Wellbeing Award, is our Pregnancy Loss and Pre-Term Birth policy, which offers support for colleagues who suffer pregnancy loss or the complexities of having a baby born prematurely. This gives all 6,500 members of our BWC family up to ten days of paid leave for the person who was pregnant and up to five days of paid leave for their partner. This includes, but is not limited to, miscarriage, stillbirth, abortion, ectopic pregnancy, molar pregnancy and neonatal loss, and is not dependent upon gestation of pregnancy or length of service. In addition, colleagues are offered paid time off for appointments linked to pregnancy loss; for example medical examinations, scans and tests and mental health appointments.
When the shortlist was announced Raffaela Goodby, Chief People Officer, said: “The recognition that comes from the shortlisting We are in the running for three HSJ Awards for this award is fantastic for helping tackle the taboo of baby loss and in ensuring our policy was put in place and available for colleagues who experience the pain of losing their baby or have a child that is born prematurely.”
Our Fight for all the Feels youth mental health campaign, specifically our Peer Support Worker programme, were finalists in the Mental Health Innovation of the Year category. Our charity-funded Peer Support workers, who are offering their lived experiences, deliver extra support to young people. The unique approach serves as a blueprint to others and it’s hoped it can be rolled out across the country.
The awards were held on Thursday 17 November at Evolution London.