Step Forward project awarded Insurance Corporation bursary

Now in its 31st year, the award is given to ideas designed to enhance local health and social care.

The winner and runner-up were announced at the Farmhouse restaurant where the awards were presented by Bailiff Richard McMahon.

Nicola Cross and Hayley Bearman received the £2,500 top award for their project, Step Forward.

Mrs Bearman, a re-ablement physiotherapist, said the idea was to help people back to independent living after they come out of hospital following a long stay by encouraging them to be more active and mobile.

‘Sometimes people have been in hospital for weeks or months and everything has been done for them,’ said Miss Cross, a re-ablement occupational therapist.

When the patient leaves they find it hard to adjust to having to do things for themselves again.

At the heart of the project will be pedometers that each patient will receive.

‘Hopefully that will create long-term changes,’ she said.

‘It’s about trying to give people a bit of control over their health.’

The runner-up received £1,000 and this year that was St John Emergency Ambulance Service paramedic Kelly Marquis, who won the main bursary last year.

Her 2022 project is focused on fall and prevention management and arose from the fact that the ambulance service attends hundreds of calls to people who have fallen every year.

This will see a piece of specialist equipment purchased and made available to Community Services.

Staff will be able to install an app on their phones which they can use to help assess whether a person who has fallen needs an ambulance or can be lifted with the aid of the equipment.

If it is the latter the equipment can be called for, thus removing the need for a 999 call.

She said she was grateful to Health & Social Care, the Insurance Corporation and St John’s for agreeing to pay the full cost of the equipment, which was more than the £1,000 award money.

HSC president Al Brouard was among the guests at the ceremony and said it was grateful for the support of the Insurance Corporation.

He praised health staff for their initiative.

‘We can’t come up with all the ideas ourselves,’ he said.

‘It’s really great that staff come up with these things.’

The two other finalists were This is MY Voice by Nick Davison, to give service users the chance to keep their voice when injury or disease might take it away; and accessible service information videos by Kitty Stewart and Nina Hickelmann, a project to create high quality accessible content for adults with learning difficulties and autism.