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.

Our winners for June 2024 are:

Graham McKinnon, Isobel Hawkins, and Nettie Gowing, (Consultant iCaSH, GUM/HIV Consultant iCaSH and Adult Safeguarding Professional) - iCaSH / Adult Safeguarding Team

Kirsten Clarke and Leila Daniel nominated Graham, Isobel, and Nettie, they said: “A pregnant patient was referred to iCaSH for a sexually transmitted infection (STI), unfortunately the patient would not engage with treatment due to her needle phobia. Untreated the infection can cause still birth, miscarriage and lifelong health conditions for the baby and health complications for the mother.

“Graham, Isobel, and Nettie worked collaboratively in engaging the wider multi -disciplinary team, developing several action and safety plans to support the patient in accessing treatment. This patient was hard to engage with and therefore action plans were unable to be completed. To enable engagement, the team were flexible in their approach which included the offering of home appointments and attending the patients GP and maternity appointments. These appointments were often not attended which resulted in treatment being started but not completed. This was difficult due to the treatment being required to be administered once weekly for three consecutive weeks.

“With the proactive and tenacious work of the CCS staff with maternity services, the team were able to support the patient to access and complete the full treatment and therefore reducing the risk to all. The collaborative work was extensive and over several months. This work was complicated and an emotionally challenging. However, the team did not give up when barriers were experienced. They kept the patient and the unborn baby at focus of their work and the best outcome was achieved.”

Amazing work well done!

Other nominations this month included:

Sandra Vardy - Duty Nursery Nurse - 0-19 Children’s Services, Luton

Sandra was nominated by Rachel Humphries for making an enormous difference to the service they offer. Parents call in wanting a straight-forward answer to help their child whether it be with feeding, behaviour, or toilet training. However, this kind of advice is thorough and needs to be led by the parents. Rachel said: “Sandra's advice is second to none, she has had numerous positive feedback from parents where they have felt listened too, advice that has been given by Sandra is something they can put into action and one parent shared Sandra generally helped her mental health that day due to the empathy that was offered.

“Sandra continues to work hard and always has a smile on her face. Sandra is a well-respected and a knowledgeable member of the team which we feel she needs to be recognised for all her hard work where she goes above and beyond.

Claire Llambias - Administrator Luton Adults

Claire was nominated by Sarah Munroe for helping to organise the staff summer BBQ event. Sarah said: “Claire really worked hard in supporting with costing, ordering, taking dietary and preferences into consideration and trying to help make it nice for everyone. Claire has been so thoughtful of others.”

Kwaku Adjei - Co-Production Lead, Bedfordshire and Luton Adults Community Health Services

Sarah Munroe said: “Kay has been supporting clinical services with populating the CQC documents, he has spent a lot of time firstly completing the FFT elements from a patient perspective but also taking a huge weight off staff by supporting us to complete this. He has been amazing.”

Kathleen Murphy - Admin Lead - Luton Adults – The Poynt

Kathy was nominated by Sarah Munroe for being “incredibly supportive of all the services here at the Luton Treatment Centre, when teams need anything, she strives to resolve it and create the change needed. We recently had a big piece of work with regards to building work and she takes the lead, organises, and just makes our jobs here so much easier and less stressful; she is always there when you need her.”

Special Needs Nursing Team – Luton

The team were nominated by Katie Palmer for being “one of the most hardworking teams I have worked with. Often under-recognised, they are a group of passionate and caring nurses and nursery nurses, who all go the extra mile for their patients and families.”

Isabel Challis - Speech and Language Therapist - St Ives Clinic

Isabel was nominated by the father of one of her patients who said: “Our son, is autistic and in mainstream school currently. Since he started school, we've struggled to find anyone willing and capable to provide advice and assistance in relation to his speech and language skills. Izzie's dedication to her work is very apparent and having experienced a series of lacklustre interventions prior to Izzie's engagement, the contrast in level of expertise, professionalism, and commitment to making a difference was frankly jaw-dropping.

“Izzie has taken the front foot at every turn, proactively coordinating meetings, face to face time with our son, and the education of those closest to him on how we can help him developmentally. As a parent, I've found that getting the right help to be an immense challenge. To have had the privilege of Izzie's time, expertise and sheer level of dedication has been nothing short of a blessing and I'm grateful for the help assistance that she's provided. As well as being meticulously coordinated, Izzie has used the time she's spent with our son, and us as parents and the school staff to great effect and her involvement has been hugely impactful for those close to our son and most importantly, to our son, himself. I wanted to say thank you and share my thoughts as I felt not doing so would be doing a disservice to Izzie.”

Amber Miguel - Trainee Education Mental Health Practitioner - MHST March/Chatteris/Whittlesey

Amber was nominated by Emma Campbell-Scott who said: “Amber has been the only member of staff picking up clinical work in the MCW area for the last few months due to staff sickness and amended duties. She has been an absolute star in asking for more cases to be allocated to her and still giving 110% in effort and personalisation in her care delivery. Amber is a fantastic clinician, and she should be recognised and appreciated for all her hard work, but particularly in the last few months!”

Great nominations everyone!