SASW annual awards: and the winners are…

On 17 March, World Social Work Day, SASW held its annual awards evening.

We were delighted to be able to award Lecturer, Alyson Leslie from Dundee University, Practice Teacher, Moira Harris from Dumfries and Galloway and the OU, with a 'highly recommended' distinction to Sheila Cooper from Circle in Edinburgh, and (for the very first time)  'joint' winners of Social Worker of the Year 2014 to Kendal Power from Angus Council, and Brenda Skeffington from South Lanarkshire. All were very worthy winners and true ambassadors for their profession and for social work.

A judging panel of SASW Committee members, supported by Wendy Harrington from SWS, Professor Alison Petch from IRISS and Alan Baird, Chief SW Adviser to the Scottish Government, carefully considered the short listed applicants before deciding on the winners. This was a difficult, but also very rewarding task, as statements from users of services and colleagues were truly humbling and inspirational.

The evening was a great success; you can read all about it in this month’s edition of PSW Scotland. We were fortunate to have some fantastic speakers and performers, Isabel McCue from Theatre Nemo in Glasgow who spoke movingly about the wonderful work the company does,  Karen Dietz who got the audience singing Scottish songs and the guys from Glasvegas who made a fabulous surprise appearance!

The stars of the evening were the ten people who were shortlisted who all attended the evening, Dr Gary Clapton from University of Edinburgh, Leah Benson from Circle, Lynne Markie from Falkirk C&F SW, Stephen Malcolm from Argyll and Bute SW in Oban, Tom Niccolls from Argyll and Bute, Helensburgh, as well as our winners.

Nominations were sought for Social Worker, Student Social Worker, Residential Worker and the new categories of Social Work Lecturer and Practice Teacher of the Year. One can never predict the number of nominations; in previous years the category with the most applications was Student Social Worker, whilst those for Social Worker of the Year have frequently been a challenge. For the 2014 Awards we were surprised to note the reduced number of Student nominations, which made shortlisting impossible, despite some excellent submissions, and we had similar findings with the award category for Residential Worker. In order to keep the process robust and credible the panel decided not to award, however we are committed to adding our findings to the Awards Review for this year.

Please click here to submit your comments on what you would like to see honoured and celebrated. So start thinking NOW who you think would be a worthy winner of the SASW Awards for 2015.