President’s Award for Healthier Cleaners

Monday, 29 November 2010 12:23  |  Web master

Caring for Ourselves

Patients need healthy staff.  This means healthy cleaners, as well as healthy doctors and nurses.

Managers have a legitimate role in promoting the health of their staff.  There are many ways they can do this – the following are just examples:

• Health screening (eg blood pressure checks)
• Smoking cessation (eg advice, counselling, nicotine patches)
• Dietary support (eg access to weight control advice)
• Healthy eating schemes (eg healthy meal-deals)
• “Cycle to work” schemes
• On-site exercise classes

The President’s Award for Healthy Cleaners challenges service managers to take action to improve the health of healthcare cleaning staff. 

 Aims:

• To improve the health of cleaners working in the NHS
• To showcase the range of health promotion activities focusing on cleaners
• To develop writing and presentation skills in hotel service managers
• To promote engagement within AHCP branches
• To raise the profile of the AHCP within the wider NHS community and beyond

Eligibility

All staff delivering cleaning services, or involved in promoting health in the NHS are eligible to enter.  Those who are not members of the AHCP will be encouraged to join, but are not compelled to do so.

Publicity

The award will be publicised via the usual AHCP channels, including website, branch communications and a personal communication to every member of the Association.  The award will also be promoted via other channels to ensure that non-members are aware of the award.

Criteria for entry

The initiative must be recent (ie should have taken place within the last two years).  Projects that started earlier than this are eligible, provided activities are still in place.

 The intervention need not be targeted exclusively at cleaning staff, but should show clearly how cleaning staff were involved.

 Entries will be considered according to the following criteria: 

Judging process

Regional heats

Initial entry will be via a 1,000 word (max) description of the service, with supporting statistics where appropriate.  Regional panels may choose to invite shortlisted candidates for interview before making their assessment.  The selection process will be organised and managed entirely by the local branch, who will be asked to nominate a single project to go forward to the national finals by 31 January 2011.

Regional winners (up to three people per project) will be invited to a one-day workshop on presentational skills during March 2011.  This is aimed at helping staff develop their personal presentation skills, and at supporting them in preparing for the national shortlisting process.  The day will include:

• Creating a good personal impression
• Developing a convincing “pitch”
• Production of presentational material on PowerPoint
• Handling questions and answers

Final shortlisting

The regional winners will be invited to present their projects to a judging panel consisting of Carina Bale, Deputy Chairs, Liz Jones and an independent health promotion expert.  The process will consist of a 10-minute presentation, with up to 20 minutes interview and questions.  Up to three people may be involved in each presentation.  Shortlisting is expected to take place during April 2011. 

All regional finalists will be given feedback on their project (including presentation) and will be invited to a one-day workshop in April 2011 to help them develop a poster presentation for Conference 2011, and an article for inclusion in the conference supplement.  Two teams will be selected to go forward to the national final.  In addition to the poster workshop, they will be offered a half-day bespoke consultation during May 2011 to help them prepare their conference presentation.

Final

Two shortlisted entries will be asked to present their projects at Conference 2011.  This will consist of a poster presentation, plus a 15-minute conference presentation.  The winner will be chosen by a panel consisting of Carina Bale, Deputy Chairs, Liz Jones and an independent health promotion expert.

Prizes

Regional winner (six)

• Three fully-funded places at Conference 2011
• One full-day workshop to help develop presentation skills
• One full-day workshop to help develop poster presentation and written report
• Poster presentation at Conference
• Inclusion in a special Conference supplement

National finalists (two)

• Three fully-funded places at Conference 2011
• One full-day workshop to help develop presentation skills
• One full-day workshop to help develop poster presentation and written report
• One half-day bespoke coaching to prepare conference presentation
• Opportunity to deliver a full conference paper, including poster presentation
• Full-page article in special Conference supplement

National winner

• £1,000 to spend on further health promotion activity
• £250 vouchers per person in the team (up to three)
• Three fully-funded places at Conference 2010
• One full-day workshop to help develop presentation skills
• One full-day workshop to help develop poster presentation and written report
• One half-day bespoke coaching to prepare conference presentation
• Opportunity to deliver a full conference paper, including poster presentation
• Front page coverage in special Conference supplement
• Services of professional journalist/writer to help publicise the initiative both locally and nationally

Cost (to be confirmed – rates estimated)

Workshop/coaching figures are based on an estimate of £1,000/day for Nigel Grinstead (incl travel), and £40 per delegate per day for room hire/food.  Suggest attenders pay their own travel (branch may be wish to contribute). 

I have assumed Nigel will lead the first workshop (presentational skills), and will deliver the bespoke coaching.  It may be that there is someone better-able to do the second workshop as this focuses more on written presentation, but Nigel may well be able to do that as well.  Suggest Karen Charlesworth does the support for preparing the articles for wider publication. 

To save money on travel etc, it may be possible to combine the national shortlisting with the first workshop – ie interviews and feedback on day one, followed by workshop on day two.  This might make it easier for Scotland/Ireland etc, to save them two trips. 

There will be an additional cost for the production of a special conference supplement, but this should be funded alongside the main conference report.

Liz Jones

29 July 2009