The Social Work Awards & Essex Social Care Academy

I am writing this as a separate post even though it fits together with my previous post which is here:

The Social Worker of the Year Awards – Vanity Awards Funded by Public Money

I’ve mentioned in the previous post that all nominations from Essex County Council for The Social Work Awards have to go through the Essex Social Care Academy. My understanding of what the Essex Social Care Academy (ESCA) does, is that they teach the social workers new was of doing things, courses, share information with other interested parties, things like that.

So the ESCA are in charge of all of Essex County Council’s nominations for The Social Work Awards.

I live in Harlow, a town that often has people hating on it, the same with Essex, that has people hating on it.

I would never live anywhere else, I was born in Harlow, and my plan is to live the rest of my life in this town, I love it here, these are my people, kind, willing to help, generous, warm, loving, friendly. I love my county as well, my kind of people. I can laugh at the mocking, including the Spitting Image song, I can laugh at myself for being an Essex girl, but I would never want to live anywhere else

I get being proud of your surroundings, I even get being proud of your job, but employees of Essex County Council take it to a whole another level, that if you think about it for too long you get a bit worried. Essex Social Care and all who sails in her, feels almost like a cult. They are the best and everyone has to think that and they need to be told by others, constantly.

I’ve been looking into the history of Essex County Council at The Social Work Awards, and there is really something not quite right.

Every single year since 2014, Essex County Council have won at least one award per year at The Social Work Awards, sometimes two. There were no awards in 2020 due to the pandemic.

As of March 2021 there were 151 LA’s responsible for ensuring and overseeing the effective delivery of social care services for children.

That is solely for England, i’m concentrating solely on England as The Social Work Awards accept only participants registered in England.

I am going to guess that these 151 LA’s also have Adult Services, so to make things easier for me. i’m going to keep it as only 151 organisations can have people nominated, which isn’t true as CAFCASS have won a couple of times, and some NHS Services, so 151 is on the low side.

So for the last seven years, only one LA out of 151 has had at least one winner per year, that is Essex County Council.

The final is a huge date in Essex County Council’s diary each year, even before they have found out they are in the final, they have the date down and ready. I estimated in the last post that there would be 30 people from Essex County Council going to the awards this year at a cost to the public of £6700 for the tickets along. After reading extensively on social media, I think there may be 40 going this year, it could be as high as 50. So costs for tickets from public money could reach over £10,000.

I cannot put into words how huge this night of celebrating and drinking with public money is to those in Essex Social Care, it is absolutely huge.

They put in a huge amount of effort into every single aspect of it.

I stated in my other post that as I didn’t know the amount of nominations that ECC make each year it could be as many as 3 full days of work time spent on nominations. In 2017 Essex County Council nominated 28 social workers for The Social Work Awards. They won one award that year and were finalists for four, including Employer of the Year, which they then won in 2018 and 2021.

There are 1200 social workers working at ECC, if 28 nominations have been done each year since 2014, that is a total of 224 nominations since 2014.

That is over 1 in 6 social workers having been nominated since 2014. That is rather a lot for an award that is just meant to celebrate social work.

That is Jan Williams, a manager working in The Essex Social Care Academy, she is the one most vocal about the awards and seems to be in charge of writing the nominations. There is passionate, and then there is obsessed, later screenshots may make which one you think she is easier to work out.

I feel that the ESCA is under a lot of pressure from those above to be successful every single year at The Social Work Awards, it’s not how you perform that is important to them, it’s how others perceive your performance that is important.

So 28 nominations in one year, and it appears that every single year they nominate themselves as Employer of the Year, they have won it twice, and were finalists in 2017. I guess they worked at it until they figured out what boxes the judges wanted to tick and finally got there.

It comes across to me as there is no genuine feelings there, this isn’t about the social workers involved at all, it is solely about the glory that each win brings to ECC that is important. The next screenshot is same manager from ESCA as before, the person tagged is now a director of local delivery but I think she was the service manager of the silver winner at the time:

So the person from the ESCA who writes the nominations and deals with all of that side of things, is telling the silver award winners boss that “it was worth the time and effort doing the nomination!!”

Forget all that sharing good practice, or celebrating social work, or all the other rubbish, in Essex County Council’s eyes it was only worth the time and effort doing the nomination because he won an award. Not quite in keeping with the supposed spirit of the awards is it?

You think your employer will be proud of you because you won an award, but they are instead only proud of the award and given how that tweet is worded, there must have been previous discussion between the pair regarding whether the time and effort put into the nomination was worth it.

In 2021, Essex County Council won two awards, one for Employer of the Year, and the other in the Adult Social Worker of the year award.

Essex County Council also sponsored the Mental Health Social Worker of the year award, so no nominations could be made for that by Essex County Council

Now, i’ve looked into the winner of the Adult Social Worker of the Year award, including watching a video, she definitely is amazing, and she also has that x factor on camera and is clearly passionate with what she does. On paper, and on the video I watched, she truly comes across as someone who would be deserving of the award which she received.

No doubt The Essex Social Care Academy saw her as a potential winner as well and wanted her nominated.

She is a Mental Health Social Worker, that is her job title, that is what she does, yet she was entered into the Adult Social Worker category. It can clearly be argued that she is both an adult social worker and a mental health social worker as she only deals with adults, and technically that is true.

However, if mental health social workers were meant to be judged among normal adult social workers, they wouldn’t have their own category at the awards.

The ESCA couldn’t enter her into the proper category, as they were sponsoring it and therefore not allowed to nominate anyone for that category, so they nominated her for the adult social worker category, instead of waiting a year.

The Social Work Awards allowed this, why even bother having a specific category for mental health social workers when they allow a mental health social worker to enter a different category when it suits them?

That doesn’t seem fair, not her fault, but it seems as though The Social Work Awards were willing to make an allowance for a sponsor who was giving them £10,000.

The rules are clear, that an organisations cannot enter into a category that they sponsor, but that doesn’t matter because The Social Work Awards will just let you enter them into another category instead of the one that has the social workers job title as the category name.

This year Essex County Council are giving The Social Work Awards a lot of money, it could be as much as £20,000 dependent on table costs and how many people go. That is a lot of money, and they know that year after year if they get through to the final that Essex County Council will spend an awful lot of money on tickets, and also sponsorship.

Put altogether, the high amount of finalists every year from ECC, that they win at least one award per year, that they allowed ECC to put a mental health social worker into another category, it raises my eyebrows.

ECC also seem to know that they will be back for the final every year.

The one thing that intrigues me the most is this Tweet by the manager at ESCA, it’s the same manager in all the tweets, i’ve used red for her in all the screenshots:

The Tweet was started by the ESCA manager saying how many nominations they had gotten, and The Social Work Awards were replying to that.

The ESCA manager drives The Social Work Awards ‘nuts’ trying to get the results early.

You wouldn’t say that if you’d asked once, that has got to be multiple times since the judging was over and before the results were officially announced that a manager at ESCA has been repeatedly contacting The Social Work Awards asking for them to give her the results of the judges decision as to who to put through to the final before they are officially announced.

Notice the winky face emoji after The Social Work Awards say “Worth the wait”, the most known meaning of a wink is because of a secret.

The ESCA manager ends her tweet with “you are ever the discreet professionals!!”

Given that the wink could imply there is a shared secret with the words “worth the wait”, and the manager then describes them as “discreet professionals!!” that in my opinion indicates there is a shared secret between the manager and the Social Work Awards regarding waiting for the official announcement of the finalists vs being told the results early.

The manager does not state that she has never been told the results early, she has not confirmed in anyway that The Social Work Awards told her no. She just described them as discreet professionals, to me that implies that they have a secret that is theirs together.

The human brain doesn’t like to lie, lying is incredibly stressful and as such the brain will tell the truth as much as possible. The manager has just stated that she asked them multiple times for the results early, what would be expected would be a firm denial that they gave them to her when asked. Expected would be ” I drive you nuts asking for the results early and you never give them to me”. something like that.

It just doesn’t smell right.

It could be as simple as during one of her multiple attempts to get the Social Work Awards to tell her the results early they told her it would be worth the wait, thus letting her know that multiple ECC finalists had made it through to the final.

If she is contacting them multiple times to ask for the results early, then either she has some issues or nobody is giving her a solid no regarding getting the results early.

The Social Work Awards can only exist because of public money, Essex County Council will be one of the highest ‘donators’ to the charity through sponsorship and ticket sales.

With award shows selling tickets is not usually a problem as most awards are entered by private companies, and the organisers know that the private company will pay for tables just to impress people.

The social work awards are still selling tickets after announcing the finalists, which means they haven’t sold out to the finalists themselves and those attending from the organisations who have finalists. Other social workers or organisations aren’t going to bother attending if they haven’t got a chance of winning.

In my view, Essex County Council will be spending at least £6700 of public money on tickets to attend the awards, not to mention the £10,000 in sponsorship, and it is in the Social Work Awards interests to keep that money coming in every year.

I’m not saying there is anything going on, i’m not saying that The Social Work Awards are showing favouritism to one of their biggest donators to keep them coming back year after year and keep spending money, i’m not saying that the social work awards are giving ECC any special privileges or information as part of a mutually beneficial relationship. I’m just saying that there are a few things that seem a bit strange and out of place.

A manager bugging an awards organiser incessantly for early results and what appears to be a shared secret between them. A mental health social worker who had what it takes to win being placed in the Adult Social Worker category as ECC were sponsoring the category that has her job title in it. At least one award won each year since 2014, sometimes more. They only have the results since 2014 on their website. Letting a fraudulent entry that came from an ECC social worker end up as a finalist

I fully understand that the Essex Social Care Academy are absolutely obsessed with winning these awards to the point that they only considered a nomination worth the time and effort because the nominee won a silver award, and they probably enter more nominations than most in the hope of winning, but all of this doesn’t sit well with me.

I do have a right to raise these questions and comment regarding what I see as odd behaviour as i’m one of the members of the public paying for all of this.

It just seems a little strange to me.