Huddersfield health staff scoop top awards

Jul 1 2009 By Neil Atkinson

A PROJECT to help pregnant women in Huddersfield and Calderdale affected by substance misuse scooped £5,000 in the annual health ‘Oscars’.

SWANS, or support for women and ante-natal services, won the Gordon McLean award which was the overall winner of the event for staff at Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust.

The money will be reinvested into the service.

BBC Look North’s Harry Gration gave the keynote speech during a day of presentations and Trust chairman Sukhdev Sharma said: “It has been an extremely informative and inspirational day.”

Winners Janet Woodhouse, substance misuse liaison midwife, and Hayley Wimpenny, children’s development worker from Kirklees Council, said they were thrilled to have won.

Janet said: “It was the girls who had used our service that really made it for us. A lot of people in the audience said that they had felt very emotional after our presentation. We are really thrilled to have won.”

A project to involve patients in a clinical audit, making sure the hospital reached standards, was the winner of the innovation category.

Samantha Saville, clinical development facilitator, described the project as a partnership between clinical audit and CAPRI (clinical audit patient representation initiative).

She detailed a number of areas where patients had been asked for their opinion, including nurses prescribing in haematology and leaflets given to chemotherapy patients.

She said: “We were thrilled and really excited to have won – this is not just us it has been a real team effort”.