Congratulations to Lisa Carmody on receiving – Honour of a British Empire Medal (BEM)
Back in September 2021, one of our fabulous Care and Support Workers, Lisa Carmody, was nominated by the Director of Quartz Care, Fearn Jones, for a Chief Nursing Officer for Adult Social Care Award for Above and Beyond Services to Social Care. We were so proud of her when she won the Silver Award across all Social Care services across the UK.
As a result of the nomination, she was recommended to Her Majesty The Queen for the honour of a British Empire Medal (BEM) and today, Lisa has been added to the Honours List.
We are so so proud of what Lisa has achieved, we appreciate her on our team every day and recognise her for the outstanding work that she has done with our clients across Merseyside.
Lisa was recently promoted and delivers some of our training on inductions and refresher training, who better to have training our teams than someone who has been given a BEM for her services to social care!
Well done Lisa!
Nomination:
Lisa has had a massive positive impact on the lives of some of our clients since starting her employment with us. Lisa works regularly with our clients who find it hard to engage with providers and services. Some of the clients that she works with misuse substances, have extremely poor mental health, are from low socio-economic backgrounds and have spent a lot of their lives in prison. We needed a really special, patient and supportive person to work with our hard to engage client base, we really found this with Lisa.
One of her regular clients, before Lisa started supporting them, had not left the house in over 15 years. At the very beginning of the pandemic, this client lost 2 of their brothers to covid, then a further brother a couple of months later to cancer. The client has a brain injury, learning difficulty and other cognitive vulnerabilities. When Lisa first started going into them, it took her a couple of weeks to get into the property as they didn’t trust her, she used to sit outside and chat to them through the window, until they let her in.
She started slowly, building life skills, such as cooking, cleaning and personal care, after a couple of months she managed to get them outside, to the corner shop at first, then further to the local supermarkets. After getting to know them and finding out their interests, they now go out and have done things like crabbing, plane spotting, picnics in the park, meals out and even for a drink in the local pub. The client now semi independently does shopping and is building their confidence every day. Their home environment has massively improved, they are able to pay bills with support and have learned how to manage their household.
Lisa also paid a massive part in facilitating their last brother home from hospital and supported him until his death, it was his wish to die at home. She then stepped up to support the client with the grieving process. She assisted, in her own time, with planning the funeral, taking our client to chapel and liaising with social workers, GP’s, churches etc in order to ensure that the clients needs were met and that they felt safe and supported.
Lisa is paid for this role, she has however, especially at the beginning, provided additional support, she has made them dinners, supported with additional shopping, cleaning and companionship tasks.
This is only a small window of what Lisa has accomplished with our clients, She has supported one of our clients to build relationships with her family who she hadn’t has relationships with for over 10 years.
Lisa always goes above an beyond in everything she does, She does it without thinking, she has made improvements to so many people’s lives and deserves to be recognised.’