This award is an opportunity for patients, families, visitors, and Trust colleagues to say ‘thank you – you made a difference’ to a member of staff or a team for anything (however small!) that helped make their experience of our services better.

We are delighted to announce that our January ‘Shine a Light’ winner is:

Sarah Mugford, Health Visitor, Biggleswade, Bedfordshire

Sarah was nominated by manager, Jane Brilus, who received an email from one of Sarah’s patients.

The email read as follows:

“I just wanted to send an email to say that the service, I received from Sarah was above and beyond. Unfortunately, I've had a traumatic recovery and I was bedbound following an episiotomy and nerve damage, possibly caused by the procedure or the epidural damaging a nerve. I was struggling to make it to the bathroom and could not sit in a car due to the pain, I was walking to the bathroom at a 90-degree angle clinging onto the walls.

“Over a week later I still hadn't been seen by anyone and was struggling with the pain, getting my baby to latch and I was at a loss with what to do. I texted Sarah who wasn't due to see me until the following week and yet she dropped everything and came over within an hour.

“I was lucky enough to have Sarah as my health visitor for my first baby too and I can't thank her enough for her caring compassion for the work she does. She helped me a great deal and even contacted my midwife and told her how much pain I was in and arranged for her to visit me at home.

“We really need more people like Sarah working in such important roles. She also wrote me out a prescription and even dropped it round the following day which was a great help. I believe in giving good feedback and I have to say out of all the professionals I've dealt with throughout my pregnancy and post birth Sarah is by far the best!”

What a wonderful nomination, well done Sarah!

Other nominations this month:

Becky Barker, Specialist Speech and Language Therapist, Princess of Wales Hospital, Ely

Becky was nominated by the parent of a little boy who she had shown tremendous support and guidance to during their difficult times. She said: “Especially with the Covid situation, the virtual support is the best way possible, is it very commendable.”

Tracy Crosland, Quality Coordinator, Quality Team

Tracy was nominated by Volunteer Lead, Karen Fell for co-ordinating the distribution of PPE across the Trust. Karen said: “Tracy has been instrumental in enabling the onboarding of two young adults with additional needs, along with a support person from their organisation, as volunteers to help with packing and collating PPE. Tracy has been open minded, positive, helpful, and flexible in ensuring that we have been able to welcome these new volunteers and ensure that they have a positive volunteer experience. They did their first shift on 16 December and will be volunteering every fortnight from the New Year. Thank you, Tracy!”

Ann Hobbs, Sister GP Liaison, GP Liaison team, Luton

Sarah Munroe nominated Ann after they had an issue with a poorly patient in clinic.  Sarah said: “Ann went above and beyond in helping us navigate through the complexities of what we needed to do for the patient, even though I knew she was busy too. She also followed up with a phone call to see how we were getting on.”

Joanne Smith, Team Leader, Children’s Services, Occupational Therapy and Physiotherapy

Jo was nominated by Chloe Barker-Rudd for keeping their services going for the past couple of months, especially over Christmas and New Year. Chloe said: “We have had both our Band 6 and 5 managers off on long term sick, along with lots of other sickness within our teams. Jo covers the SPA line, Child Protection line and reception when needed. She never complains and is always on hand to help any of us who need her. She is a fantastic manager and a credit to the Trust. Children's Services would not been running without her.”

Lois Fisher, Professional Lead and Practice Learning Coordinator for Cambs Healthy Child Programme

Sarah Hardman nominated Lois for working incredibly hard over the last few months following a request from Anglia Ruskin University to take 20 pre-registration child branch nursing students on placement within the Healthy Child Programme. This is the largest number of pre-registration students the service has ever accepted for a single placement, with usual numbers being around seven. Student nurse numbers have increased significantly in recent years following the publication of the NHS People Plan 20/21 and increased interest in NHS careers during the pandemic.

Sarah said: “To enable our nursing workforce to grow, it is going to be important to support our local universities and facilitate increasing placement capacity within our Trust. Lois has shown innovation and creativity in accommodating these 20 students within the HCP. This huge task has involved creating an 8-week rotational plan allowing each of the students to visit a variety of HCP clinics, in addition to devising an eLearning schedule and series of online workshops to enable the students to achieve their necessary nursing proficiencies.

“Lois has also had to source a Practice Assessor for each of the 20 students, ensuring everyone is up to date within HCP with their assessor training and is suitably qualified to support a child branch nursing student. In addition to this, each student will be visiting a mass vaccination centre, as part of this placement, so further liaison and coordination has been needed to enable all 20 students to do this over the 8 weeks.

“This has been an incredible piece of work and Lois has remained professional and dedicated throughout the process, even when the university recently made the difficult decision to delay the start of the placement at very short notice. Lois should be commended for time, work and effort that has gone into ensuring CCS can support these new student nurses and allow them to have a great and varied learning experience with our Trust.”

Ingrid Wilson and Emily Rounds, Health Visitors, North Locality St Neots

Ingrid and Emily were nominated by Michelle Tee after receiving an email of thanks from a mother they had supported.

The email read as follows:

"I contacted the duty desk one morning late last year when I was feeling completely overwhelmed, my toddler was really struggling with her emotions, and I was struggling with adapting to having a new-born and a toddler. I just needed to talk to someone, to be able to admit I was struggling and say it out loud. The lady who answered the call was incredibly kind and reassured me a duty health visitor would contact me that day.

“Ingrid called me within a couple of hours, her kindness and empathy were everything I needed that day. It helped me feel that everything was going to be okay and that everything my toddler was doing was very common and my guilt and anxieties started to lift for the first time in weeks. I felt heard and understood. After a long call, Ingrid explained she would ask Emily to call me and follow up with me.

“Emily did call, and we spoke for over an hour, she really listened to every concern I had. At no point did I feel rushed, Emily’s manner was so reassuring and empathetic. Emily told me about a charity called Pandas and through them I was able to access a CBT therapy course which began that week, that changed everything for me. Emily also helped with my concerns re my toddler’s behaviour and helped me to come up with a plan moving forward.

“Ingrid and Emily also set up listening sessions, so I knew I had those in place. Suddenly I didn’t feel so lost anymore. This experience with Emily and Ingrid is so very different to the contact I had when my first child was born. I can’t really put into words just how much Emily and Ingrid helped and got me out of a black hole through listening and coming up with a plan to move forwards. I really feel that they made all the difference to get me back to a place where I am enjoying my toddler and baby and feeling so much stronger.

“I am so very grateful for that, I never felt judged or abnormal and the overwhelmed feeling soon passed once I had talked it through with them. I don’t know how quickly I would have made it out of that dark place without such warm support and I thank them both for this and I just really hope other mums get to experience health visitors as incredible as Emily and Ingrid. "

Michelle said: “This demonstrates how valuable the 0-19 duty desk is and how staff can absolutely make a difference even remotely to families struggling. Ingrid and Emily continue to work above and beyond to support families in challenging circumstances and really encapsulate the Trust values in their professionalism, their kindness, compassion and dedication.”

Wow! What amazing nominations to start 2022!  Well done everyone who was nominated this month, truly well deserved!