Frontline Awards: previous winners

Chloe
Chloe has been a member of the Care Leavers National Movement for three years, has led an initiative in Coventry that has reformed how language is used at the local authority and has mentored eight care leavers to support them on their journey into independent living. These are just a few examples of the extortionary impact Chloe is having for care leavers.

Felicity
Felicity has been a real inspiration and role model for other young people at the children’s home she previously lived at, using her lived experience to help other care leavers to believe in themselves and to pursue their talents and dreams. She has started her own photography business specialising in pets and alongside this is training her dog Comet as an autism assistance dog.

Iris
Iris is a determined, strong willed and motivated young person. Despite having over a year out of school, she has remained focus on her studies and is now preparing to sit her GCSEs, with the aspiration of doing an apprenticeship at college to help people in the future. Iris is eager to change the system and be the voice for others who may be going through similar challenges as her.

Kindly supported by The Rangoonwala Foundation and System C.

Jemma, Barnsley
Jemma has a passion for social work and always goes that extra mile for children and families, as well as her colleagues and her wider team. Her natural warmth and empathy enable her to create meaningful relationships with families, as she prioritises the wellbeing of children and is creative in her practice in order to achieve the best possible outcomes. 

Kakoli, Westminster
Kakoli is a dedicated social worker with 20+ years at Westminster, serving as a respected service manager in the busy assessment team. Known for her empathy and deep understanding of local families, she brings a creative, systemic approach to her work. A strong advocate for equity, diversity, and inclusion, Kakoli’s leadership is defined by her commitment to making a positive impact and championing the needs of both families and colleagues.

Niketa, Why Care
Niketa is the founder of Why Care, a social enterprise dedicated to transforming the foster care system in the UK through innovative recruitment, comprehensive training, and robust support. Their mission is to support local authorities to recruit diverse skilled foster carers, ensuring that every child in need finds a stable and loving home. Why Care provides a holistic assessment process facilitated by individuals with both lived and professional experience, which is an innovative and unique approach. 

Sponsored by The Portal Trust.

Unaccompanied asylum-seeking children’s service, Coventry
The unaccompanied asylum-seeking children’s service team in Coventry support children who have newly arrived in the UK and care leavers. The team’s work has strengthened not only the experiences of unaccompanied children but also national policy as they attend strategic meetings on future developments in this area of practice. They’ve also hosted a conference with over 1000 attendees, supporting to upskill the workforce on how best to support this group of young people.

Sponsored by Hampton’s Resourcing.

Jonny
Jonny is a care leaver and social worker based in the North East of England. In his current role as Development Lead, Jonny’s work has seen him developing and implementing new technologies in the pursuit of ensuring that social workers in North Yorkshire spend as much time as possible in the places they can do the most good, which is directly with children and their families. As a Frontline fellow Jonny has been involved with a variety of activities over the years to support our work.

Sponsored by Frontline’s board of trustees.

Melissa
Mel is described as compassionate, an advocate for children, always motivated to achieve what’s best for them and a much-respected member of the team. In her first year of training on Approach Social Work she excelled, already showing exceptional potential in the profession.      

Nimal Jude
Nimal’s experience spans working within local authorities, the Social Care Institute for Excellence, and the Department of Health and Social Care. She was also Strategic Engagement Lead during the development of Social Work England. She now holds the role as Head of Practice Development at Foundations, the national What Works Centre for Children and Families, where she has been the driving force behind their Practice Guides.

She has always been passionate about educating the next generation of social workers, in bringing innovation into the profession, and most importantly achieving what is best for children and their families – everything she does is driven towards this aim.  

Artur
Artur is chair of Islington’s Children’s Active Involvement Service. He’s worked tirelessly to improve the support for Islington young people for over 5 years. Whether setting up a food and toiletry bank, decorating the contact centre or lobbying for suitable housing for care leavers, he has made a huge impact. He has achieved all this (and more) while also achieving a distinction in his Business BTEC and training as a freelance make-up artist.

Addy
Addy has written and recorded ten songs. His first song, ‘I Can Do Anything’, is about his disability not holding him back in life. Outside of music he has completed his Bronze Duke of Edinburgh Award and is currently working towards the Silver Award. Addy has also set up his own car wash business to raise money for a cerebral palsy charity. He is focused on shaping his own care experience and he is passionate about improving the experiences of other young people in care.

Annie
Annie is an amazing individual, wonderful mum and a great corporate parenting advisor.  Annie’s approach to working and listening to young people in care and care leavers has resulted in real visible changes to services and policies that make such a difference to young people. She has led a consultation on care experience as a protected characteristic, secured a household living fund for care leavers and helped review, reshape and re-launch children’s residential care in the area. Last year she graduated university with a degree in counselling.

Sponsored by The Care Leaders, The Fairer Fostering Partnership and the Rangoonwala Foundation.

Kenneth Atigah
Kenneth is a core part to the children in need team in Islington. He’s reliable, intelligent and extremely hard working. He has a keen curiosity and builds strong and compassionate relationships. Kenneth never shies away from going the extra mile to support children, families or colleagues. He keeps children’s wellbeing at the heart of all decision making.

Sponsored by 31ten Consulting.

Celia, Islington
Celia has over 10 years social work experience in child protection. She leads passionately and fiercely to improve service delivery and social work practice, which in turn has achieved the best outcomes for children at risk. Celia has been instrumental in a number of initiatives, such as the Edge of Care Service, and she designs and delivers training for the community.

Sponsored by Tile Hill Recruitment.

Jo Ritchie
Jo has tirelessly supported children, young people and women who are being or have been sexually exploited. Her vast experience ranges from over 10 years with Barnardo’s, her innovative work in Hawaii, with the Bluewater Mission Justice Ministry, reaching out to sex trafficking victims, to most recently setting up Night Light with Avon and Somerset Police. A project that partners with street sex workers aiming to support and identify children at highest risk of exploitation.

Sponsored by The Portal Trust.

Staying Close, Darlington
Darlington’s Staying Close is a newly formed team who work with 22 young people who are transitioning from children’s homes or supported accommodation to independent living. Everything from physical accommodation to social events, life skills training and much more has been designed around children. The team consistently go above and beyond for young people. 

Sponsored by Hampton’s Resourcing.

Kasey Thompson
Kasey has a clear commitment to ensuring that children and young people are seen, heard and valued. As a Frontline fellow she is a great ambassador for the profession and an integral part of Frontline’s racial diversity and inclusion steering group. She has an exceptional understanding of how aspects of children’s identities intersect. Through systemic approaches, and by creating an inclusive space that allows for the exploration of all aspects of identity, she is able to explore with children and young people what matters to them.

Sponsored by Frontline’s board of trustees.

Helena Oatts 
Helena is incredibly professional and studious; she approaches her academic work with precision and commitment. She shares her ideas freely and with the intention of supporting others to learn, and is the first person to contribute in lectures, workshops and unit meetings. Helena is a fierce advocate for children and families, practising with empathy and compassion. The families she has supported have shared how helpful they have found her support.

Sue Williams
Sue has dedicated her life to social work and to doing the absolute best for children and families. She has a career that spans four London boroughs and three more local authorities; that has included the Local Government Association and Ofsted. Throughout all this she has become a leading light in bringing change and innovation to children’s social work. Her commitment to the sector has made a huge and lasting contribution not just to every team she has worked with but to every child and family they have supported. 

Amir
Amir has been integral in Become’s innovative accredited Personal Adviser (PA) programme which aims to build PAs’ knowledge and skills so that young care leavers can access the support they need to live the lives they choose. Amir accessed training himself to develop his presentation and facilitation skills, and helped design session content, drawing on his own experience to ensure the programme was grounded in care leavers experience. Amir has also taken part in Become policy activities, attending parliament for Become’s All-party parliamentary group.

Cameron
Cameron constantly seeks to create fun and innovative ways to engage young people with his Voice team, with the aim of them contributing to decision making in Wiltshire on topics that impact children. For example, Cameron has been a huge part of changing the way Wiltshire Children’s Services write and the language they use in writing. This has resulted in Cameron leading on Wiltshire’s training for practitioners and sharing his valuable experiences around the impact of writing on him. 

Paris
Paris is a representative on the Care Leaver National Movement and as part of this role she has been instrumental in lobbying for improvements for care leavers, interviewing social workers and influencing recruitment. An example of this is the development of hampers for care leavers when they move into their first home and Paris has worked with local and national businesses to develop this further. Paris is also a steering group member in Coventry where she advocates for young people and successfully secured additional funding for staffing of the local House Project. 

Sponsored by The Fairer Fostering Partnership and the Rangoonwala Foundation.

Arthur Scott
Arthur is able to engage with children and young people from all backgrounds, and successfully engages with those deemed ‘hard to reach’. Arthur’s use of language is a real strength, he is able to engage young people and their families in conversation with ease, and builds excellent rapport with those he works with. 

Josie 
Josie is passionate about supporting social workers and making a difference in practice. She uses creativity, empathy, empowerment and flexibility to support and facilitate positive change with families, and has done significant work to ensure that social workers are capturing and representing the voices of children and young people. 

Charmaine Malcolm
Charmaine has a commitment to leadership development and continually invests in her own growth as a leader, as well as advocating for and supporting others in their leadership development. She recognises the impact this can have on the workforce and most importantly outcomes for children and families. Through her self-led work, which she often uses as a vehicle to start a conversation with and to ultimately influence the senior leadership team, Charmaine has proved herself as a creative leader and change maker who demonstrates excellent, anti-oppressive social work leadership and who inspires positive change. 

Sponsored by Tile Hill Recruitment.

Tooba Malik, Thrive App
When social workers are supported, resilient and on top of their workload, they can have meaningful interactions with the children and families they support.  But under increasing pressure and stress, social workers must be able to prioritise their health and wellbeing, and time with children and families if they are to remain in frontline practice. The Thrive app, designed and created by Tooba, acts as a tool for social workers to stay on top of their workload, manage stress and catch signs of burnout early and access a directory of support. Crucially, it aims to ensure they can spend the most time with children and families and stay in the profession longer term. 

Blackpool Children’s Services, Blackpool Families Rock
Blackpool Families Rock is invested in co-production and working systemically with families. They have co-produced videos explaining child protection conferences, co-produced all of their recording templates from Early Help through to social care and their adolescents service – ensuring records are respectful and support families understanding of decision making – and much more. Ultimately, co-production is at the heart of all they do and Blackpool Families Rock have aspirational outcomes for all the people they serve in the community. 

Family Group Conference team, Darlington
The Family Group Conference Team in Darlington works closely with families and always ensures that children and young people are at the centre of plans and meetings and their thoughts, wishes and feelings are heard. This is achieved through creative ways of capturing their voice through direct work and enabling them to participate in decision making in an impactful way. Between April 2021 and April 2022, the team supported 122 families and have had some amazing outcomes by working in the way that they do – 94.29% of conferences avoided/de-escalated child protection plan and 94.12% of conferences supported a child to return to family from care.  

Oyeyinka Olaniran
Oyeyinka is a Frontline Fellow, having completed one of our leadership programmes. Our board of trustees wanted to recognise Oyeyinka’s commitment to anti-racism and all the work he has done around this within his local authority – championing change, equality and inclusion. He also goes above and beyond to support his team to achieve the best possible outcomes for children and families. 

Sponsored by Frontline’s board of trustees.