The Sanctuary Personnel Social Work Awards
The Social Work Awards are a charity, all money coming in is “charitable donations”, all the donations are spent on the running of The Social Worker of the Year Awards. Those involved in the charity do not get paid for what they do, nobody involved with running the charity makes any money from the charity.
That is what they say, but it’s not true.
Money is raised through sponsorship of award categories, and ticket sales for finalists and those who attend with them.
Sponsorship can be from £2500 to £22,000. Those who sponsored the year previously have first refusal to have those slots again, this is solely for the Headline Sponsor which is £22,000, and Corporate Partner which is £15,000.
Here is a full rundown of what a sponsor gets for their money:
18 categories, both the headline sponsor and corporate sponsor get two categories, all the others are £10k each, which means a total of £177,000 ‘donated’ to The Social Work Awards through sponsorship.
The headline sponsor is Sanctuary Personnel, a for profit recruitment agency, they are a corporate sponsor.
The Corporate Partner is BASW, British Association of Social Workers, which is basically an association of social workers in Britain. Their thing is that thousands of voices is stronger than one, and they can get more done for the profession than a social worker alone can. By joining you also have the option of joining the Social Workers Union for a small price.
Their interests are in improving things for social workers and things like that. I’m guessing their sponsorship is to highlight what they do and let social workers know they are there. 21,000 social workers are currently a member.
The other 13 category sponsors, paying £10,000 each for the privilege, 12 of those are public bodies paying £10,000 for sponsoring out of public money. Suffolk County Council is sponsoring two categories.
UNISON is a sponsor, they are a trade union.
S12 is another corporate sponsor, they have an app and website which helps mental health professionals complete Mental Health Act processes. So they are sponsoring as a form of advertising.
So, Sanctuary Personnel..
In their own words on The Social Work Awards website, they are “the UK’s leading social work recruitment agency”.
Quite clearly they are “donating” £22,000 a year to be able to have things like that written on The Social Work Awards website.
From a service user point of view, i’ve got absolutely no problem with a business doing what it can with regards to advertising to make more money for itself, it’s using The Social Work Awards as advertising, not my money, I have no problem with that in principle.
There appears to be many many serious problems with Sanctuary Personnel that makes them wholly unsuitable to be sponsoring anything that has to do with raising up the social work profession.
The following blog post is a good read and is written by a social worker:
The history of The Social Work Awards is that they were set up in 2006 by a social worker who felt there should be an awards ceremony to recognise social workers.
In 2011 the awards received charitable status.
So the story of the awards is very simple, set up by one person in 2006 with good intentions and it then received charitable status in 2011 and it’s recognising social workers and that’s that.
Except it’s not.
I have no idea what the awards were like for the first few years when it was one person with good intentions, obviously with help.
Things start to get interesting in 2010. Every story needs a hero, one that swoops in, saves the day, and makes everything brilliant. We’ve all watched enough superhero movies to know things aren’t as straightforward as that and that those who first appear to be heroes, end up being revealed as having ulterior motives in a surprise twist.
This is one of those stories, though it’s not really a twist and not surprising, it’s pretty much just a rundown of any corporate awards, they are all based on the same structure, i’ve covered this before in the complaint handling awards post on the other blog. I’ll rewrite it on this blog and then link it.
I could write about how Sanctuary Personnel are responsible for the changes in the awards since 2010, I could write about how Sanctuary Personnel have been making decisions and are on an equal footing with the charity since 2010, or, I could let Sanctuary Personnel tell the story in their own words.
The following are from the Sanctuary Personnel website on a post regarding their highlights of the awards for the past 10 years, the post was written in 2019. I will share a link to the post after i’ve posted screenshots and my own personal opinion regarding those screenshots.
I’m just speechless, that is just so emotional. The awards were a bit rubbish until Sanctuary Personnel rushed in to save the day! It’s just so beautiful to read about the moment that two became one, when The Social Work Awards and Sanctuary Personnel stopped being two different entities when it came to the awards, and they became “we” instead, what a beautiful story.
“We” Count – 7
It’s not exactly shocking or surprising that Jeremy Corbyn would have been willing to give up his time to give a speech regarding social work and it was nice of him to support them in this way.
Why did it need the Edward Timpson to cement the credibility of the event? Surely just the event being credible would be enough?
I also wouldn’t call it ministerial backing, he was supportive in his role as Minister for Children and Families.
“We” Count – 2
It’s a meeting once a year with Parlimentry Ministers, it’s good for social work that ministers are meeting actual working social workers, but how does it allow them to promote the importance os social work throughout the year? It’s not important because a handful of social workers got to meet ministers, it doesn’t work like that.
“We” count – 2
Set the awards apart from what? All the other corporate awards out there? They all tend to have what anyone involved would describe as incredible, and of course there is peer support for all awards, otherwise why bother having them. No point in winning an award if your peers aren’t going to be impressed.
The judging panel is packed with high profile people who understand the work that you do? It’s full of peers, none of them high profile unless you count Beverley Williams who founded the social worker of the year awards. Three of the judges are from Essex County Council out of 35 judges, so just under 1 in 10 of every judge is a current employee of Essex County Council.
They change the categories each year. Essex County Council has now won Employer of the year twice, they were also finalists in another year for it. It’s now changed to Supportive Employer of the year, how are they going to get prestigious recognition when nobody else will ever be Employer of the year again.
“We” count – 2
So Sanctuary Personnel help run everything, but the other sponsors solely fund the awards. BASW are only giving the awards £7k less than Sanctuary Personnel, yet BASW are just helping to fund, Sanctuary Personnel are running the show.
“We” count – 1
So the impact of the awards only means something because the founder was awarded an MBE? I am going to take a guess that was awarded because she went over and above to achieve something she believed in.
I’d never heard of the awards until I started blogging, had a quick look, saw they were the same as any other awards, and that was that, didn’t change my view of social work, Essex County Council did that.
That said, other organisations have restored my faith, along with other social workers, Essex County Council children’s social care is more than a little bit rubbish.
https://www.sanctuarypersonnel.com/blog/2019/10/social-work-awards-our-highlights?source=google.com
It is clear just from that post from Sanctuary Personnel that they are not just sponsoring the awards, they are helping to run it and making decisions regarding just about everything, categories, judges, where it’s held,
In 2011 Genesis PR, a public relations firm, were appointed to run the awards.
Sanctuary Personnel are in the business of making money, that is primarily what they are about. With regards to their social care sector, the more organisations that ask them to supply them with staff the more money they make, the more staff they have on their books, the more staff they have to supply to organisations, the more money they make.
Their entwinement with The Social Work Awards means that prospective customers would think that everyone involved with the awards, including all involved in the parliamentary reception, endorse Sanctuary Personnel as a supplier of staff for social care.
They get all of this, including making decisions and choosing judges, for only £22,000 per year. I have no idea how much return they see on that investment, but i’d guess they get at least 20 times that back. If social workers are looking for an agency to join, then being so closely linked to the awards means that candidates are more likely to trust them, using one of Sanctuary Personnel’s own words, it gives them credibility. They wouldn’t be allowed to have this level of involvement in the awards if everyone involved with the awards didn’t think they were worthy.
So, The Social Worker of the Year Awards appear to be mostly an advertising tool for Sanctuary Personnel, mostly paid for using public money from sponsorship from public bodies, and ticket sales, again from public bodies. There is a part of me which is really rather impressed with what they managed to do. Weasel their way into the awards and then end up helping to make decisions on basically everything to do with the awards, it’s clever and a brilliant marketing plan.
The rest of me is absolutely disgusted that this has been allowed to happen.
The only difference between The Social Worker of the Year Awards and any other corporate awards, is that you don’t pay to enter, everything else is identical, including the obvious bias towards those who support the awards the most. There is a strong bias towards Essex County Council that is obvious.
The awards are officially run by a PR firm, Genesis PR, who were actually appointed in 2011 by the charity.
Time for another blog link, same author, who has summed this up really well along with writing about some serious problems with two of the corporate sponsors.
It was written before the awards ceremony in 2018,
Capita ended up pulling out of the awards due to pressure. They were co sponsors of the Championing Social Work Values category along with Essex County Council. One of the nominees in that category refused to attend, along with a member of the judging panel.
I am rather saddened as someone with lived experience of social work that they were the only two. There was a lot of noise from outside of the awards to try and get the Social Work Awards to tell Capita to pack their bags and go, but I am incredibly disappointed that only one judge, and one nominee withdrew.
I was incredibly disappointed that Essex County Council did absolutely nothing despite the fact they were co sponsors. Then I found out why:
That one screenshot sums up the Social Work Awards perfectly, you have the winner of the Best Social Work Employer who outsourced all of their employment operation to Capita, who withdrew from co sponsoring an award with Essex County Council due to pressure because Capita are morally bankrupt. Then to make the screenshot absolutely perfect, the Best Social Work Employer of the Year was sponsored by Sanctuary Personnel.
I had absolutely no idea the awards even existed back then, but as a resident of Essex, I would have made a considerable amount of noise regarding ECC co sponsoring a category with Capita.
I don’t care if they handled all of ECC’s recruitment, they still should have done something given that Capita are the opposite to even the most basic social work values, or human values.
If not the whole LA withdrawing, those individuals attending had a choice, those ECC nominees could have pulled out. They didn’t.
The contract with Capita ended in about September 2019, they don’t make decisions based on morals, they go for the cheapest.
So Genesis PR are in charge of the awards. so of course the manager from Essex Social Care Academy is overly friendly with them. Not to mention that Genesis PR have done some PR work for ECC.
It was one of their employees who told the manager from the Essex Social Care Academy that she looked forward to seeing her at the awards ceremony. This was back in March, before nominations even opened, bit weird she knew that Essex would make it through to the final.
Genesis PR did what they do best, their job is to get as much money as possible “donated” so that the awards can be done each year.
It’s gone from a simple awards ceremony in a room in Parliament, to a glitzy affair and tickets costing at least £150 each, a three course meal, and alcohol.
It does not raise the profile of social work, it does not inform the public of anything, because they don’t know it exists. It’s a closed circle, the only interest is from those with an interest in social work who will be the only ones who will know about it.
A PR firm knows how to put on a good award show, a corporate awards show, which is what The Social Work Awards have been turned into.
It only needs £177k in sponsorship and tickets costing over £150 each because Genesis PR have made it so glitzy.
Do you really need a three course meal to hand out awards? Do you really need alcohol included in the ticket price to hand out awards?
They managed without for the first few years.
It is now just a display of excess, a chance for Sanctuary Personnel to advertise, for Essex County Council to get it’s ego stroked, and for the public to lose a great deal of money.
They call this raising the public profile of social work. How? It gives the public an insight into what social workers do. How? The only things that are published regarding why the winner of that category was picked as a winner is a short summary of why they were picked.
A very brief case study of one nominee per category, when most categories aren’t relevant to how the public view social workers, is not going to educate any member of the public.
The public also firstly need to know it exists, then go out of their way to find the website, and read what the winners did that made them winners.
The social work awards do not raise the profile of social work amongst the general public.
They are a cash cow for Sanctuary Personnel, they are an ego stroke for Essex County Council, but they have strayed so very far away from their original purpose.
You have to agree to potentially spend at least £150 just to nominate someone as you have to agree that either the nominee or a representative will attend the awards in person, only way to do that is to buy a ticket.
I went back through all of the years that I could to add up how much public money Essex County Council has spent on The Social Work Awards in total. I cannot be exact as sponsorship costs and ticket prices will have varied. But since 2014, Essex County Council have spent between £60,000 and £100,000 being involved in the Social Worker of the Year awards.
That’s public money, that is money that should be going on social care, not useless pieces of glass and ego’s.
The worst thing in my view about The Social Work Awards is that it promotes ego in social work. That is a terribly bad thing. I’m not saying you shouldn’t be proud of what you do, i’m not saying you shouldn’t be told you are doing well, i’m not saying your employer shouldn’t tell you that you are brilliant.
What I am saying is that putting one social worker above another is not a good thing, the same as putting another public organisation above another. Bragging about awards all over, well everywhere, that achieves nothing.
I found a lot of information I wasn’t expecting when I was searching for each year since 2014 to see if ECC had been a sponsor. One of the articles I found was from a local online newspaper, it was the year that ECC had 10 finalists. The writer of the article did the maths and stated that Essex has 1 in 10 of the best social workers in the country. That is the reason ECC is doing this, that is why they are spending tens of thousands of pounds.
Ego’s are destructive and have no place in social work
The Essex Social Care Academy describe themselves as award winning, solely because of the two ’employer of the year’ awards.. I struggle to get my head around this, they nominated themselves three times, and won twice. Are they really so desperate for recognition they need to have someone pat them on the head and hand them a piece of glass to feel worthy?
We are talking about the manager who bugs The Social Work Awards to tell her who the finalists are early.
I’ve covered my thoughts on this here and how I am certain that ECC are being given an unfair advantage over others:
There is also the judge who comments on some of the Essex Social Care Academy posts on Linkedn
It makes financial sense for any business and charities to cater for one of their biggest donors. Essex County Council enter an extraordinary amount of nominees, and an extraordinary amount get through to the final. It’s been as high as 10 finalists that have reached the ceremony stage.
Essex County Council can be relied upon to buy a lot of tickets, not just for finalists, but for the whole of the Essex Social Care Academy, Helen Lincoln who is the executive director of children’s services, plus team managers, and anyone else important enough to have an over £150 three course dinner bought for them using public money.
It is in The Social Work Awards interests that Essex County Council’s nominees are finalists, and as many as possible as ECC can be relied upon to cough up the cash, lots and lots of cash, for tickets, i’m estimating that as many as 40 ECC employees are going to the Social Work Awards on the 4th November. Given tickets are at least £150 each, they want to make sure that is continued.
My opinion based on what i’ve seen, that screenshot of the manager stating she drives them nuts by continually asking for results early and the winky face from The Social Work Awards, is that they are given the results early, given the winners are chosen by scores given by the judges when the nominations are seen, they already know who wins when they announce the finalists.
Another post by the same manager from last year when she was posting the finalists omitted the name of one of the ECC finalists. There were two ECC finalists in the Adult Social Worker of the Year category. The manager only announced to twitter one of them, who just happened to be the eventual winner. I think they are told.
The Social Work Awards were something thought up by a social worker who genuinely wanted to do something for her profession, to celebrate the good in the profession. It’s highly commendable that she managed to get it off the ground in the first place given that Awards are usually started by for profit companies who have cash to spare.
In my opinion the game changed when Sanctuary Personnel were allowed too much input and a PR firm was given free reign. It was then turned into another corporate awards where getting the most money is the sole aim of the awards.
Essex County Council shamelessly use it for PR purposes. They are paying for their awards. Correction, we are paying for their awards.
You are not the best social work employer, you received an award for the best social work employer, in the same way you are not an outstanding children’s services, you have just been awarded an outstanding rating by OFSTED and their tick box exercise. I have huge issues with OFSTED and their ratings. My children’s school is rated outstanding. It’s rated that by parents and children, i’m one of the parents who rate it outstanding. Ofsted gave it only a good rating, which the principal knew they would as the school is solely focused on the pupils and not fulfilling the parts of Ofsted’s criteria that would have given them an outstanding rating but would not have benefitted the pupils and may have had a negative effect.
It really disgusts me that the Essex Social Care Academy use the Social Work Awards to state that they are an award winning Social Care Academy. They are the ones who are in charge of ECC’s participation in the awards and they are responsible for the over £60,000 of public money that has been spent just so they can state they are award winning.
How much of an ego do you have to have that you pay over £60,000 of public money to have it stroked?
I’ve already seen all of the self congratulating since the finalists were announced, the 4th November is going to be horrendous. They will likely win at least two categories, and they will all be insufferable for ages, actually years. They will already be thinking about who they are nominating for next year.
While 40 Essex County Council social workers and social care employees are enjoying a £150 three course dinner with alcohol included, some service users, including children, will be cold and hungry. Some social workers employed by Essex County Council will be cold and hungry, as will their children.
The amount of residents in Essex who are living in poverty is rising and while that is happening ECC are spending more each year on a frivolous awards ceremony that is absolutely pointless.
Cllr Louise McKinlay is all over social media showing off about ECC’s help and advice for the cost of living crisis, to help those living in poverty. She doesn’t shut up about levelling up, yet she has attended the social work awards before.
So Essex County Council have spent about £20k this year on the 2022 awards during the cost of living crisis. That tells us all we need to know about how they view service users and residents in Essex.
The Social Work Awards themselves do not uphold any values you would expect from social work.
The whole awards are pointless, meaningless, and a complete waste of public money.
I’d like to see Essex Social Care withdraw totally from the awards, get a refund on the tickets they have bought for this year except the 8 they agreed to buy when they made the nominations, and to stop wasting public money on these awards. Find better ways to acknowledge their employees contribution to social work, one that is inclusive of all of them, not just a select few.
They won’t, because they don’t listen to criticism, the lengths they have gone to, and the amount of public money they have spent, to have the ‘special’ relationship they have with the awards organisers, is more precious to them than following any kind of moral code. Like the bit that says you don’t waste £20,000 of public money when service users are starving and cold.
Essex Social Care will be spending £20k per year of public money on buying awards for as long as the awards are running.
As for Sanctuary Personnel and their relationship with the awards, nothing can be done there, without Sanctuary Personnel, there would be no awards