Frontline Awards

This award recognises an individual social worker who is demonstrating excellent social work leadership within a local authority, improving social work delivery to benefit children and families. 

• This category is open to social workers working in statutory social work in children’s services. 
• You do not need to be a manager to be nominated for this award. We believe that by tapping into leadership skills, all social workers can inspire positive changes, big and small, within their own practice, teams and across services.
  

Nominations should highlight the following: 

• The leadership skills demonstrated by the nominee and what impact this is having for children and families. 
• The ability to set a clear direction and collaborate with/support others to deliver complex work. 

This award recognises an individual frontline social worker working in a local authority, who is delivering excellent practice which is helping to improve outcomes for children and families.  

• This category is open to social workers working in statutory social work in children’s services.  
• We are looking for an existing example of excellent practice and the impact this is having for children and families. 

Nominations should demonstrate the following:  

• A strengths-based approach to social work practice 
• A commitment to engaging the whole family, listening to children and building effective relationships 
• The ability to be able to balance strengths and risks 
• Children front and centre of all decisions

This award recognises innovation within social work, helping to create social change for children and families who do not have a safe or stable home. 

• We are looking for evidence of a new idea, initiative or service that is being developed and implemented to create lasting social change for children and families who are receiving support from social workers.  
• This category is open to groups of up to three people who are working together on an innovation, as long as at least one of them is a qualified and registered social worker (though they do not have to be working as a practicing social worker). Larger groups can be nominated for the team of the year award if they meet all the relevant category criteria.  
• Results may not have been fully realised yet but a clear statement of anticipated outcomes and performance against the objectives of the innovation should be explained.

This award recognises a team of social workers or a multi-agency team who have done outstanding work to improve support for children and families. This will be awarded to the team judged to have created the most impact through their collaboration.  

• For multi-agency teams nominated at least one member should be a practising social worker within children’s services. Other members can be from other professions or agencies. 
• Nominations should demonstrate how the team has taken individual strengths and brought these together to collaborate and create change. 
• Please note when we say team we are referring to teams who work together regularly and not project teams. 
• A team can be made up of a maximum of 10 people, with two members of each team to represent the group at the award ceremony if they win the final award.

This award recognises up to three individual young people with first-hand experience of the social care system and will be awarded to a young person for their achievements, or to recognise that they have gone above and beyond to help create change within the sector.  

• This category is open to any person with first-hand lived experience of the social care system between 16 and 25.  
• We welcome nominations on a variety of achievements. An achievement could be in education, sport, music, art, dance and many more. 
• For a nomination around creating change in the sector, we are looking for evidence of how they are working to help create change for children and families.

This award recognises a Frontline fellow or group of fellows who have made a significant contribution to the sector in a specific area.  

• The winner of this award will be chosen by Frontline’s board of trustees from among the charity’s 3,000 fellows.  

This award is kindly supported by Frontline’s board of trustees 

This award recognises a participant on Approach Social Work – who has excelled in their first year of training, shown commitment to children and families, and has made a difference within their local authority placement or in direct work with families. 

• The winner of this award will be chosen by Frontline’s judging panel from the 400+ participants currently in the first year of Approach Social Work. 

This award recognises an individual who has made an outstanding contribution to the lives of children who need the support of a social worker.