The Health Care Employer Award goes to the Health Care Employer who can demonstrate strong commitment to employees without diminishing the care they provide.

The winner will have a strong and loyal workforce, who feel valued and recognised for the contributions they make.

Sponspored by: Worcestershire Workforce

The 2023 awards will culminate in a black tie dinner for all the finalists at the Abbey Hotel in Malvern on Thursday, September 14, where the winners will be announced.

Here are you finalists:

Ann Norris

ANN Norris is the manager of Chandos Lodge Residential Home, Hagley, in Stourbridge and each day she strives to ensure her team members are happy and content in the workplace. She says: “Having happy staff filters down to residents living in an environment that is positive and full of laughter.

“My staff being happy and content in the workplace is the most important element of my role. As a team we laugh, cry, make resolutions and joke together, and at the end of each day we leave work with the immense sense of family.

“Being an employer is not about HR policies and procedures or what, as a company we can offer to our employees, it’s about being the foundation that builds the team together.”

Ann tries to ensure when, at times when staff have their own struggles, she can be there for them in the correct way for the most positive outcome.

It is for that reason she completed the Mental Health First Aid course. She was overwhelmed by the knowledge she was nominated for this award, and to be shortlisted to the final three has “blown my mind completely”.

Debbie Roscoe

ARRIVE Alive is the UK’s only registered charity of its kind, it is solely funded by public donations and is dedicated to funding vital lifesaving vehicles and equipment for Community First Responders (CFR’s).

Arrive Alive, which works with the ambulance service, was founded by Birminghambased mother Debbie Roscoe following her youngest daughter’s life-threatening case of measles in 2017. During the darkest days in hospital when it was uncertain if Ellie would recover Debbie decided to channel her energy into something positive and she set up the charity.

Since then, she has helped raised thousands of pounds to buy emergency first response vehicles. CFR’s are medically trained volunteers who are regulated and dispatched to life threatening 999 calls by the ambulance service.

An Arrive Alive vehicle can reach a 999 medical emergency in those vital seconds/minutes prior to a road or air ambulance due to being directly based within the heart of the community. CFR’s are trained to deal with some of the most time critical medical emergencies.

Sanctuary Care

AS a leading not-for-profit care provider, Sanctuary Care has been shortlisted for its dedication to enriching the lives of its staff, nurturing talent, showing staff they are valued and investing in their professional development and their recent Strong Gold Investors in People (IiP) accreditation is testament to this.

When it comes to enriching their lives, supporting the mental and physical wellbeing of their staff is equally important as helping their careers to flourish. Wanting to create a culture where people talk freely about mental health, they worked with an external wellbeing coach to carry out research with their home managers, following which they created Cultivating Confident Conversation workshops, exploring how to spot the signs of mental illhealth and support staff to navigate these conversations.

Another highlight is the way they empower their residents to be actively involved in how their homes are run through co-production, giving them a sense of achievement and purpose.