Inspiring individuals, dedicated teams and passionate volunteers from across Leicestershire Partnership NHS Trust (LPT) were honoured for their exceptional contributions at a sparkling awards ceremony held on Friday (26 September) evening at The Grand Hotel in Leicester.
This year’s annual Celebrating Excellence Awards, sponsored by headline sponsor Tilbury Douglas and award category sponsors, Browne Jacobson, and Conference Works – facilitated by LPT’s registered charity Raising Health – brought together some of the Trust’s brightest stars, putting their outstanding achievements over the last 12-months firmly in the spotlight.
Hosted by Leicester presenter, singer and mental health advocate Andy Pierce, the evening celebrated staff, teams and volunteers whose extraordinary contribution to building compassionate care and wellbeing for all were recognised with awards – following nominations from members of the public, patients and service-users, carers, and colleagues.
Angela Hillery, LPT chief executive, said: “Our staff and volunteers consistently demonstrate their commitment to building compassionate care and their determination to help us to make a difference together. These awards are our opportunity to thank them for their outstanding dedication to the people who use our services, to our LPT family, and to the NHS.”
Award winners, nominated from 13 categories, took to the stage to pick up trophies for embodying the Trust’s values of compassion, respect, integrity and trust.
Among the winners a special round of ‘a-paws’ went to Caroline Love and Hugo the therapy dog, who together fetched the Volunteer of the Year Award for their work visiting wards and services to positively impact patient recovery journeys through pet therapy.
The following awards were presented on the night:
Delivering Exceptional Care Award – presented to Dr Annette Shawcross
Consultant community paediatrician Annette was nominated by the parent of one of her young patients with complex needs. Annette delivers exceptional care through her patient and reassuring approach, taking on emotional discussions in a measured and compassionate way and going above and beyond to liaise with other services through letters of support. Her nominator said that Dr Shawcross has “individually contributed to a better quality of life [for my daughter]”.
Excellence in Enabling Services Award – presented to the facilities team
LPT’s facilities team cover a wide range of roles across the Trust, often doing the behind the scenes work to ensure all our services can function efficiently and effectively. This includes catering, cleaning, waste management, portering, and switchboard services – and much more. The impact the team makes is felt at all levels of LPT and help ensure patients have clean environments – with LPT recently highlighted as a top performer for cleanliness – and tasty and nutritious meals, that blood tests are transported in a timely manner, appointment letters are sent out, uniforms are made available and goods distributed.
Group Excellence Award – presented to the health, safety and Emergency Preparedness, Resilience and Response (EPRR) team
The health, safety and EPRR team at LPT have worked with counterparts from Northamptonshire Healthcare Foundation Trust (NHFT) as part of our Trust Group arrangement to streamline processes and create a shared approach to improve the management of safety and EPRR across both organisations. This has led to smarter working and a release of more time to focus on safety, allowing the team to continue to step in and lead on incidents and business continuity as and when they arise, as well as provide reassurance for staff.
Excellence in Equality, Diversity & Inclusion Award – presented to Reasonable Adjustment Clinic (RAC)
The RAC is a weekly bookable clinic where staff can discuss any issues they may have with accessing reasonable adjustments while at work. The team behind the RAC is comprised of representatives from EDI, the staff networks, procurement, HR and business managers, who can then offer practical support and advice to help staff and managers navigate reasonable adjustments. Successes have included access to assistive software, equipment, changes to environments and workplace coaching to significantly improve the quality of working lives for staff.
Excellence in Leadership Award – presented to Louise Lee
Louise has delivered compassionate care to children, young people and their families for the last 40 years and leads LPT’s children’s continence service. Louise has recruited, trained and developed the team, allowing the service to continue alongside her own caseload and implemented significant service changes through digital innovation, resulting in the elimination of the ‘review waiting list’. Working with colleagues in University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust (UHL) to create a new step-down approach has reduced waiting times and ensures each young patient is treated by the correct service, at the right time.
Learner of the Year Award – presented to Yvonne Dube
In 2024 dietitian Yvonne completed the Director of Nursing and Allied Health Professionals Fellowship, where she led a quality improvement project to enhance collaboration between dietitians and district nurses in the care of complex patients. Her work demonstrated a desire in learning to be a great leader, focusing on multi-disciplinary impact, and improved patient outcomes.
Excellence in Partnership Awards (sponsored by Browne Jacobson) – presented to Neighbourhood Mental Health Cafes
Forty-one Neighbourhood Mental Health Cafes are delivered in partnership with 16 voluntary sector organisations across LLR every week. The scheme has provided direct support to more than 8,000 people in the last year who have been able to drop-in to get help without the need to book an appointment, potentially avoiding the need to go to A&E. The partnership reflects the diversity of the LLR population and organisations both represent and truly understand the needs of the community they support.
Unsung Hero of the Year – Compassion Award (sponsored by the Conference Works) – presented to Sarah Jones
Sarah has organised and created a network of support for asylum seekers in Charnwood which has created better access to health care support and has gone above and beyond to support people with basic needs, like food and shelter. Sarah often spends her evenings and weekends working with local organisations, transporting donations across Leicester. Her work also includes working with mental health teams to increase suicide awareness and creating Mental Health Friendly Places, also working out-of-hours to ensure these run smoothly and so that she can engage with communities and supported to overcome challenges faced.
Excellence in Research Award – presented to Kristelle Craven
Kristelle has shown exceptional commitment to applied research that delivers real-world impact through her doctoral work, which addresses a pressing national priority – supporting stroke survivors to return to work. The result is the development of TTEAM, a digital, self-guided toolkit designed for use by both stroke survivors and employers. Engaging with a wide range or organisations, experts and those with lived-experience, Kristelle’s research has resulted in an accessible, inclusive and practical toolkit to enhance quality of care and support workforce sustainability.
Excellence in Quality Improvement or Innovation Award – presented to the community phlebotomy service
Sometimes the simplest innovation can have the greatest impact, as the community phlebotomy service found when they switched their process for producing blood bottle labels. For years phlebotomists in the service hand wrote hundreds of blood bottles daily, resulting in additional time taken to ensure accuracy on the tiny labels and due to rejections at the pathology lab. With some funding and help from IT the service can now print labels prior to visits, eliminating human writing error (and smudging), meaning less stress, and importantly more patients seen, with almost 500 additional visits completed a month since the change earlier this year.
Team of the Year Award – presented to the LeDeR team (Learning from lives and deaths of people with a learning disability and autistic people)
The LLR LeDeR team work together to review standards, speaking to service-users, families, carers and health and social care professionals to drive up standards of care and improve outcomes for those that use LPT services. LLR LeDeR is currently number one nationally with 100 per cent of reviews completed with a six-month target, thanks largely to the team’s ability to support each other and work towards a shared vision.
Excellence in Patient or Service User Involvement Award – presented to the substance abuse team
The substance abuse team work closely with service users to gather feedback and make meaningful change to how care is delivered in practice and policy. One recent concern raised by service users about contaminated drugs was addressed swiftly and put into practice, immediately helping patient safety. This collaboration has resulted in more service users choosing to engage beyond discharge by moving to substance use agencies in order to continue their recovery journeys.
Volunteer of the Year Award – presented to Caroline Love and Hugo the therapy dog
Caroline and her four-legged friend Hugo have been volunteering their time to visit LPT wards and services for many years. Caroline always finds the time to say ‘yes’ to visit as many different sites as possible each week, bringing much-needed smiles to the faces of patients and staff. Their visits also help patients engage with services, one inpatient, who was missing their own pet, didn’t feel able to leave their room until an introduction to Hugo. Caroline worked with another young patient with a fear of dogs, spending all day offering reassurance and support to help him to feel more comfortable. Hugo’s calm temperament while meeting and interacting with so many people and patients across LPT services guided by Caroline and her willingness to offer support have made a huge difference to our Trust.
Thank you to our sponsors who made the evening possible – headline sponsor Tilbury Douglas, plus award category sponsors – Browne Jacobson and Conference Works – and gift in kind sponsors, The Grand Hotel, Central Print and Taylors Florists.