Suffolk Family Carers named overall winner of 2019 GSK IMPACT Awards
Melanie May | 20 May 2019 | News
Suffolk Family Carers has beaten over 370 charities across the UK to win the overall 2019 GSK IMPACT Award.
Suffolk Family Carers will receive £40,000 in unrestricted funding as well as expert support and leadership development provided by The King’s Fund.
Suffolk Family Carers has helped carers of all ages across the county for the past 30 years, and received 11,000 calls to its helpline in the last year alone, an increase of 30% on the previous year.
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The GSK IMPACT Awards are run in partnership with The King’s Fund and recognise and reward small and medium sized charities working to improve people’s health and wellbeing in communities across the UK. Entries to the 2019 awards opened last year, and Suffolk Family Carers was one of ten winners with the other nine UK charities awarded £30,000 and leadership development.
This year £337,000 in prize money was awarded to UK charities, with ten winners receiving £30,000 each, and nine runner-up organisations receiving £3,000 each. As the overall winner Suffolk Family Carers was also awarded an additional £10,000 at the award ceremony at The Science Museum in London on Thursday 16 May.
In choosing Suffolk Family Carers as the overall winner, the GSK IMPACT Award judges were particularly impressed with the range of creative support services set up by Suffolk Family Carers, including The Suffolk Young Carers Schools Awards to recognise schools that identify and support pupils who look after a family member, its Carer Friendly Hospital scheme to help hospitals consider the needs of family carers as well as the people that they care for, and the specialised support services it provides for carers looking after family members with mental health needs, substance abuse issues or autism.
They were also impressed with how the charity helps young carers to balance their responsibilities as a carer with their own personal needs through social activities, individual support and residential trips – last year they supported over 1,700 young carers through these activities.
Kirsten Alderson, CEO of Suffolk Family Carers said:
“It’s such an honour to be awarded the GSK IMPACT Award 2109. Having spent time with this year’s other winning organisations, I’m blown away by the talent in the charity sector.
“We’ll use our award to provide even stronger services for family carers in Suffolk. The development programme for our leaders will get will help us go from strength to strength.”
Lisa Weaks, Head of Third Sector at The King’s Fund, said:
“Suffolk Family Carers is doing vital work to support a huge number of carers across the county. The judges were particularly impressed by the charity’s excellent partnership working across schools, hospitals and pharmacists. By finding innovative ways of identifying and supporting carers and integrating their services with schools and the NHS, Suffolk Family Carers has made its services stronger and better able to support carers of all ages.”
Katie Pinnock, Director of UK and Ireland Charitable Partnerships at GSK, said:
“We are delighted that Suffolk Family Carers are this year’s overall GSK IMPACT Awards winner, providing an impressive range of services. It is a highly professional organisation demonstrating strong leadership, addressing a clear need, and putting steps in place to ensure that those individuals who would have otherwise slipped through the net get the help and support they require; a worthy overall winner. We’d also like to congratulate the outstanding work of the other nine 2019 GSK IMPACT Award winners.”
The 2020 GSK IMPACT Awards open for applications on 1 July 2019.
About Melanie May
Melanie May is a journalist and copywriter specialising in writing both for and about the charity and marketing services sectors since 2001. She can be reached via thepurplepim.com.