Caremark Thanet, Canterbury and Dover: Awards Ceremony

On Thursday 30 November, we held our second award’s day, and it was an enormous success.

Last year, Caremark Thanet celebrated its 10th anniversary, quite a milestone for any business. We decided that to mark the occasion we would combine our celebration with recognising the work that our care assistants do.

Last year’s event was so successful that we decided to make the awards part of the occasion an annual event. Our second awards day surpassed the success of last year’s event. The feedback we received was extremely positive.

We made awards to care assistants in several different categories. Amongst those categories was our “All “Rounder” award for the person who can turn his or her hand to just about anything. Our “Moment of Truth” award that recognises a carer who has delighted a customer by doing something a little special in a difficult situation. And our “Reliability” award recognised the person you know you can turn to when things get challenging.

The afternoon was also an opportunity for many of our business contacts to come along and hear about the work that our care assistants do. A number of those businesses sponsored our awards. We are very proud of the links that we have with local businesses.

We also made two special awards. The first was a long service award. This went to Debbie Barrett who joined us in August 2013. Debbie has provided care to a wide range of customers over the last 10 years, and at the moment is providing live-in care.

Our second special award was made to a business. This award was our community business award. We are a community engaged organisation and we were looking for a company that reflected our business ethos. We will make this an annual award, this year, however, it went to Ian Wade, of Wade Business Solutions. Ian has supplied our photocopiers and scanners since 2015. Ian “Service with a Difference” ethos and involvement with the community resonate deeply with us.

This year we were able to make awards to a number of our international care assistants. We have been recruiting internationally for over a year, We now have care assistants from such countries as, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Kenya and The Gambia. We are very proud of our diverse workforce and the cultural richness that they bring to our organisation. They have made a significant contribution to our business, our customers and our local communities.

We will have our third awards ceremony next year. It will be difficult to beat this year’s event, but we will do our best to make it bigger and better. For now, we thank all our care assistants for the work they do, and all the businesses we work with for the support they provide to us.