Freeways Awards
Freeways hosted our annual Awards at our Open Day. The awards were given out by our Patron Lord Mayor of Bristol. This was a true celebration of the wonderful achievement of the people we support and staff that support them. Details of the winner and their achievements are listed below:
Liam Ginn (Community Day Services) was the Winner of the Freeways Being Active in the Community Award
Liam and his support Worker Rowena have been volunteering at Changing Lives Clevedon for the last 4 years upcycling furniture, their pieces have sold for more than £2,500! They are now receiving commissions for furniture project.
Lauren Knight (2 The Glen) was the Winner of the Freeways Outstanding Manager Award
This is Lauren’s first management role and she moved to a new service and has transformed the team, filled all the staff vacancies and filled the empty flats. Lauren has created a more person centred service that is built around the needs of the people living in the service and the outcomes achieved by both the staff team and the tenants are amazing.
Louise Parrish (Jesmond Road) was the Winner of Freeways Person of the Year Award 2024
The trustees were told of Louise’s transformation over the last ten years – Louise has faced many challenges in order to make the changes she wanted in her life – with change can come great anxiety and Louise has overcome her own fears about change with the support of those around her. Louise now has greater independence in her supported living home with a greater sense of choice and control. In addition the judges were impressed with her sense of right and wrong and standing up for others who found it difficult to stand up for themselves.
Maria Suarez (The Beach) the Winner of the Freeways Outstanding Staff Member
Maria has been an integral part of the Beach since Freeways took over in 2020 and linked to the service for many years. Previously Maria had taken some PWS to the Holy sites in Jerusalem. The PWS and staff nick name for Maria is Mary Poppins- as she is always in search of perfection! (practically perfect in everyway!)
Special mention to all the other shortlisted staff members:
• Claire Merrick– from the maintenance team – not only for her dedication and good humour but also for allowing some of us to cut off all her hair to raise over £1,000 money for McMillan Cancer Charity
• Marina Alverez Pila – who was nominated by someone we support for the quality of support offered to him and other in supported living services
• Olu Adeosun from the bank team for her hard work, dedication and resilience, with her manager Noe describing her as an invaluable asset to the organisation.
Michael Smith was the Winner of the Freeways Exceptional Achievement Award
Michael has achieved something which many budding creatives can only dream of attaining – their film being shown in cinemas across Bristol and a premiere in London. In addition, with his friend, he hosted a festival of short movies for authors with autism at the Watershed last summer.
Lucy Newman (Miller Farm) was the Winner of Freeways training and development award 2024 is Lucy Newman!
In line with our key value: Having Great Staff. Lucy sourced lots of free training and supported her team to access it to ensure that the people in the service received a quality service. Lucy has also supported learning for the residents in the home. Lucy's commitment to training was demonstrated with a recent senior manager visit to Miller, where he arrived for a staff meeting and in the morning Lucy had facilitated Makaton training to improve staff communication with some of the PWS, when he arrived Lucy set the fire alarm to test staff response in an emergency situation and the first part of the staff meeting was a quiz to test staff knowledge of oral health care!
And finally the Freeways Team Award 2024 goes to Hillsborough House!
The team started off the year with some bad news but they decided not to focus on the negative and rather use their passion, their feedback and sheer hard work to go from zero to hero! There were so many nominations for different team members individually and the team as a whole that the trustees felt they needed to award it to them for the turnaround they achieved, so this is for the whole staff team!
