26. My acceptance speech for CBE, Lemon Class 2020, award

Yesterday, my good friend Florence Wilcock, creator of the wonderful 'The Obs Pod' podcast series which follows her life and work as an obstetrician, published a fascinating episode called 'Awards', mainly talking about the growing culture of awards in the NHS. It is thought-provoking and real - I thoroughly recommend it.

Without wanting to give too much of a 'spoiler', it includes a story that has hitherto been 'secret' - my CBE, Lemon Class 2020, award. By far, my best award ever - albeit, a little unusual.

Flo’s podcast sparked a whole mix of thoughts and reflections, from all sorts of stages of my life, so I thought I’d try and make some kind of sense of them here.

So here is my own 'Awards' podcast. And my own roll of honour of some of the people who have supported my 'Whose Shoes' journey and are very special to me.

Whether you are keen to know the nickname I had from my teacher at primary school or why I had three hands in a photo in the newspaper, I hope this episode will provide something for you.

I’m talking about awards – and specifically (clears throat) giving my acceptance speech for my CBE, Lemon Class 2020, for ‘challenging the status quo’.

Thank you, thank you.

Mentioned in the podcast
The Obs Pod: Episode 97 Awards (buzzsprout.com)
Wild Card: Episode 13: Yvonne Newbold - Newbold Hope
Wild Card: Episode 18: Nadia Leake and Rachel Collum - Family Integrated Care

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Transcript

My acceptance speech for CBE, Lemon Class 2020, award.

 

I’ve never done this before. Normally my podcasts are a little more planned, but here are my spontaneous thoughts and reflections on a podcast that I only heard today. I’m going to be talking about awards – and specifically giving my acceptance speech for my CBE, Lemon Class 2020, for ‘challenging the status quo’. 

But that’s really jumping ahead, so you’ll have to wait a little bit longer to find out what I’m talking about.

I think my #JFDI spirit here is probably inspired by meeting up with my friend Helen Calvert this week. Helen was one of our original #MatExp Whose Shoes leaders. She was talking about how she sometimes jumps online to make a video while her hair is still wet, just because she has a message to tell.

I love Helen. Somehow my generation don’t really do that, certainly we never did. When I think of all those years I didn’t go swimming when I was young, because I had a perm. I had to have a perm because my hair was apparently too unexciting to wear naturally. And, of course, my permed hair went frizzy if I went swimming – and so I didn’t go swimming. What the hell was that about? I love swimming again now and go every week!

So here I am with my metaphorical wet hair, jumping in … although even I know that it doesn’t really matter whether you have wet hair or not if you are recording a podcast. 

Anyway, the podcast I’m talking about that inspired this episode, is the latest episode of the Obs Pod by Florence Wilcock. It’s called ‘Awards’.

You really must listen. It is a tour de force - awards in general, but specifically awards in the NHS, how they motivate, demotivate, frustrate and generally stir feelings - and then Flo’s fabulous zesty bit, which I will repeat here because it is such a brilliant message - so powerful and incredibly true.

[Clip from the Obs Pod ‘Awards’ episode 97 – the zesty bit. “How do you make people feel? Internal validation is what really matters]

So, what is my experience of awards? I guess I have been quite lucky. I have had quite a bit of recognition for my Whose Shoes work, some of it completely out of the blue, in particular, my nomination as an HSJ 100 wildcard, which inspired this podcast in the first place.

But curiously,  Flo’s podcast sparked a whole mix of thoughts and reflections, from all sorts of stages of my life, so I thought I’d try to make some kind of sense of it here.

Where do awards start from? I was trying to think whether we had awards at primary school … in my day.

At first I thought we didn’t have any. We certainly didn’t have stickers or ‘star of the week’ or any of the kind of stuff that you get these days.

But I suddenly remembered. In my last two years at junior school, I won the poetry prize. I have no idea what other awards they were, but that’s what I won.

I still have the little paperback books, with a note from my head teacher in the front of each of them.

A puffin quartet of poems in the 4th year, 1965! (4th year would be Year 6 in current parlance) 

And ‘4 feet and 2, an anthology of verse’, that I won the previous year. 

And I felt a little ‘goosebumpy’ moment, realising that the spark of writing poems was sown (and indeed recognised) and all those years.

I remember my teacher, Mr Treadway who encouraged us, and what a big part poetry plays in my work these days in Whose Shoes. I bet Mr Treadway would be pleased. He used to call me ‘Twinkletoes’ – I have no idea why, and I wonder if it will be even allowed these days!! 

So then I got thinking about the Newbold Hope conference that I did last week with Yvonne Newbold. Check out her amazing work – I chatted to Yvonne in episode 13. Interestingly, I first met Yvonne when we were both named as HSJ inspirational women, back in 2014. An award!

Along with Alison Cameron, we were outside the more obvious NHS leaders, who I think made up the other 47 recipients. We weren’t in the NHS at all. We were outsiders.

To check this, I had a quick look back at the booklet they produced. Yes, we keep these things over the years – the memorabilia of awards. Another topic, perhaps!

It is interesting to see what people were cited for, particularly people I have got to know and love since. Sarah-Jane Marsh was already up there for her “strong focus on staff and patient engagement”. Well, that hasn’t changed, thankfully! 

Deborah Lee, now chief executive in Gloucestershire who gave a wonderful and very personal introduction to one of our #MatExp Whose Shoes events recently, was (and I quote) “proving it is possible to have a family life alongside a senior role she has two young children”. Shock horror probe!! Would they say that about a man, I wonder. Er,no.

I have seen come across Julian Patterson, who pokes fun at all-things-awards (and pretty much anything else) on Twitter, and I guess there is a healthy balance somewhere to be struck between the different perspectives - it is very Whose Shoes territory indeed.

So returning Yvonnes Newbold’s conference, she had some truly extraordinary speakers, challenging stereotypes about around violent and challenging behaviour in children, caused by anxiety. I loved it as it looked way beyond the usual healthcare parameters.

People have lives. Lives in the community. Children have lives, including their life in school. The role of education in children’s development and wellbeing is huge, but often services and support circles (healthcare, education, social care, community) do not link up and talk to each other. So, it was wonderful to hear Rachel Tomlinson, a really forward-thinking headteacher, speaking at the conference. Speaking about awards and rewards.

Rachel has a radical approach to awards in school. She doesn’t have any. She doesn’t have any sanctions either. She basically advocates seeing the child as a whole person, realises that they come from very different backgrounds and opportunities, and will be motivated by different things.

If they are having a meltdown, look beyond the immediate challenging behaviour and help the child to feel safe.

In terms of rewarding them, recognise exactly what it is they are doing well. By talking to the children – and really it’s coproduction at an early age - Rachel confirmed the fact that children appreciate being recognised for their individual efforts and achievements by the person they value most, typically their teacher, rather than necessarily being given a ‘star of the class’ type award on a predictably rotating basis, which can actually be a bit meaningless, for those who know they will be chosen and very demotivating for those who don’t get chosen.

I am paraphrasing Rachel’s incredible talk and approach – obviously it is far more nuanced than that, but you get the idea.

I am so privileged to meet with people like this who are prepared to think differently and to challenge the status quo.

As apparently I do. My lemon award.

But more of that anon…

Flo talks in her podcast about awards being political. Oh boy, do I know about that.

In my pre-Whose Shoes life, employed by the social care department of a local authority, I won an award… which got me in a lot of trouble! It was from the Association of Social Care Communicators, and I flew up to Glasgow to receive it. We had a wonderful awards ceremony!

And when I came back to work, I was marched off to a little into interview room and asked lots of questions, and effectively disciplined. It was the beginning of a great falling out. I was clearly too creative and had broken some unwritten rules, it seemed. I’m still not quite sure what they were!

I might talk about it more when I finally publish THAT book. For now, suffice to say that I won a national award for communications – taking the concept of personalised care and communicating what it meant in a really creative way – bringing it to life through an innovative tool – actually a board game. But ruffling a few feathers along the way. This was before Whose Shoes – and quite separate.

At the award ceremony, photos were taken. I was holding the winning framed certificate with someone who apparently shouldn’t have been there. Our communications department cropped the photo and it was published in the paper. It looked ridiculous as it looked as though I had three hands. In fact, I’ve only have two.

As part of the award, I won quite a large sum of money for my department. It contributed to the wider departmental awards ceremony. We didn’t normally have one, but we did that year. Clearly I couldn’t be completely ignored, but my achievement was made into a TEAM award and I have photos of me holding this award … alongside people who had absolutely nothing to do with it. I’d like to think that the more ethical people felt simply embarrassed but there were a couple of smiling faces as if they had done absolutely everything to make this award-winning achievement happen! They so hadn’t.

I definitely think there is a time and place for awards and it’s really nice when you get something that matters to you. One of the awards that meant a great deal to me at the time was back in 2008, when I first jump ship from my day job to set up Whose Shoes.

I was a finalist in their ‘Institute of Applied Entrepreneurship, New Business Awards’ for the most inspirational story. I was runner up and I don’t remember exactly what the person who won it had done, but it was a disabled person with a wonderful inspirational story. I was very happy with that. But perhaps another year I would have won it … or indeed not been shortlisted. It is all rather arbitrary. A lot depends on the people who happen to be nominated at the same time.

And another example. As a lot of you will know, I love working with the Darzi Fellows of London Southbank University. They have a citizens Academy. Mary Ryan, one of the citizens, put me forward as ‘citizen improver of the year’ in the ICIPS award – that’s the Institute of Continuous Improvement in Public Services. 2018. To be nominated by someone with lived experience meant a lot to me. I went up to Leeds and received the award from Professor Becky Malby, who runs the Darzi programme. She had crowd sourced some comments about me from people who near me, and particularly people on Twitter, and she read them out. That was very special indeed - not just what people said, but particular that she had gone to that time and trouble.

I think it is about whether the award feels meaningful to you and seems to recognise something that actually matters to you.

I was shortlisted last year for the Meridian/ West Midlands AHSN ‘innovation and improvement champion’ award. I was up against some really great competition.

Including Hesham Abdalla, a guy I really respect and admire, who set up Hexi time, a very highly regarded timeshare-type scheme in the NHS.

In the end, several of us shared the award. That could be seen as a cop-out – why not just pick someone? But it felt inclusive and encouraging, and has helped forge some bonds between us, leading to further improvement, which after all is what it’s all about.

So, coming back to Yvonne Newbold again. 

And the Queens honours.

Yvonne won an MBE this year and I couldn’t be more thrilled for her. 

Everyone was thrilled for Yvonne. She is one of the most humble people I know - and achieving so much. If all awards were like this, you would simply melt with delight.

The absolute opposite of some of the more cynical awards that we see for certain politicians and people who are in the right place at the right time, or know the right people. People who have not gone the extra mile … for anyone but themselves.

It is wonderful to see ‘ordinary’ people like Yvonne being recognised. Extraordinary people, by definition. People making a difference to families, to communities.
 This is what awards should be about, I think.

And several other amazing people that I know also won MBEs this year …

Amanda Mansfield. An incredible mover and shaker in maternity care who has just moved from her innovative position as consultant midwife at London ambulance to take up the head of midwifery role in Chesterfield. I’m sure that they are so lucky to have her there and the award is so well deserved.

Pauline Woods. For her work at Born Too Soon, neonatal unit at Kingston Hospital. 
 Wow, what incredible work Pauline has achieved over a long career, helping so many parents with tiny babies, making a difference as they begin their family life - the very opposite of the kind of problems highlighted in the Ockenden report published this week.

We need more Paulines. And in fact the community I know doing fantastic awards around Family Integrated Care.

So, what was my CBE Lemon Award?

Florence and I have never spoken about it publicly. I didn’t know we were allowed to. I’m not sure we are! But here goes.

Flo tells the story in this week’s episode of The Obs Pod. She went to extraordinary trouble to nominate me for a Queen’s award and waited patiently, (which must have been extraordinarily hard for Florence) gathering an incredible amount of testimonial evidence from people that I really hold dear. 

When she finally realised it wasn’t to be, she compiled a fantastic book, sharing with me all the different contributions that people had made.

I’m looking at it now. It is extraordinary. I was so moved by it – I don’t really do this kind of stuff, and I really didn’t know how to react to it. It was just so incredibly moving to read and find out what people who really mattered to me had said about me and my work.

For two years, it has been private between me and Flo, but now it is out there in her podcast series, and I think it is brilliant.

(Insert clip)

Obviously, I thanked Flo at the time for the incredible time and effort and love that she had put into the application, and crowdsourcing so many wonderful contributions from people far and wide, not just in our #MatExp community but much further afield.

They didn’t just say a paragraph or two – they all wrote pages!

Thank you for taking the time and trouble to write such lovely things.

And I will name them like a roll of honour as honestly each of these people is totally amazing and deserves an honour themselves, if they have not already received one – some have!

So here goes …

Lemon Parade

Andrea Sutcliffe, Kath Evans, Pippa Kelly, Zoe Bojelian, Yvonne Newbold, Nicola Enoch, Ann Remmers, Sunita Sharma, Leanne Howlett, Joanne Minford, and Jacqueline Dunkley Bent. 

#NoHierarchyJustPeople– and what an amazing bunch of people!

But particularly, thank you to you #FabObs Flo – you are a superstar recognising others. I so hope you win a British podcast award, but if you don’t, your podcast is just as special and so many people know that they are valued, supported, and feel safe as a result of your wonderful obstetric care.

I couldn’t even look at the lovely book Flo had compiled. It meant so much to me! The lemon award genuinely meant more to me than any official award, but I did feel that I didn’t know whether I could thank the people who have contributed to it. So, as I say, I never have. So now I’m saying it… This meant the world to me. Thank you one and all.

So, there you have it.

My acceptance speech for CBE, Lemon Class 2020, award. 

And I didn’t have to even have to buy a hat.