Disabled Children’s team announced as runners up at prestigious award ceremony

An innovative project team in Calderdale are celebrating their success at the West Yorkshire NHS Modernisation Awards 2005. The Calderdale Disabled Children’s Team beat off tough competition from 120 entries across the region to become runners up. The winners were announced by ‘Calendar’ presenter Christine Talbot, at a glittering event on Friday.

Calderdale Disabled Children’s team is made up of learning disability nurses, social workers and occupational therapists. Collectively, they wanted parents and carers to have a say in service development and convinced parents that agencies providing services for disabled children genuinely sought and welcomed input from them.

They helped Calderdale parents set up the Calderdale Parent and Carers Council (CPCC) which now has over 100 members. The CPCC consults its members about their needs and is regularly consulted about services and how they should be developed.

Disabled Children’s Team manager Dilys Hetherington said, “Being short listed for this award gives a huge boost to Calderdale’s disabled children, parent carers and the Team and everyone in Calderdale who works to ensure that disabled children and their families are at the centre of service provision. The needs of disabled children can be overlooked when mainstream services are planned, and being shortlisted will help to raise their profile and demonstrate the importance of including parents in service planning."

This is the second year in a row that South West Yorkshire Mental Health Trust have been successful at the modernisation awards, which are designed to recognise and reward the success of NHS staff in improving services for local people.. The difficult task of judging the entries was undertaken by patients and users of NHS services in West Yorkshire, the very people who benefit at a practical level from these innovative projects and ideas.