THE Worcester News has been given an award for its coverage of schoolboy Oscar Saxelby-Lee's battle against leukaemia.

We were honoured for our ongoing coverage of five year old Oscar's fight to find a stem cell donor and his recent fundraising appeal, which raised £500,000 in just under four weeks to pay for potentially life-saving treatment in Singapore.

We won Campaign of the Year for stories by Worcester News news editor Alicia Kelly, reporter Grace Walton and former reporter Matthew Dresch at the Midlands Media Awards.

Their stories shone a light on the plight of the St John's schoolboy whose family were faced with the daunting challenge to raise the huge sum of money in a short time when his stem cell transplant failed.

We reported how the community came together to hold events, take on fundraising challenges and were able able to raise £600,000 towards Oscar's CAR-T treatment and a further £160,000 for the Grace Kelly Childhood Cancer Trust, which will go towards research into childhood cancer.

The judges said that our campaign of support for Oscar was a fantastic, outstanding achievement that demonstrated the emotion that the well-crafted printed word could generate.

At the awards, Alicia Kelly and Matthew Dresch were also shortlisted for story of the year for their coverage of a record-breaking donor drive to find a stem cell donor for Oscar, held at Pitmaston Primary School earlier this year.

The awards, run by the Birmingham Press Club, were handed out at a black tie ceremony at Villa Park last night.

Alicia Kelly said: "We were absolutely thrilled to win Campaign of the Year for the way we have told Oscar's story.

"Oscar's courage has inspired and united our entire community and it has been a privilege to share his story with a wider audience and to highlight the phenomenal way in which his supporters in the city and further afield responded so generously to his family's cry for help.

"We wish him all the best as he starts the next stage of his treatment."