It is with great pride that we can announce Sharon Davies, CEO at HCPA has been recognised for her contributions to the Adult Social Care sector across Hertfordshire and beyond. Sharon’s work has spanned 20 years and her commitment to working in partnership with stakeholders and members to raise the quality of care and professionalise the sector has been unparalleled in any other county.
On receiving her nomination Sharon said ‘I feel this award is for everyone who works and supports social care in Hertfordshire, because it is together that we have worked to ensure the most vulnerable people have been supported to live their best lives. My work for the last 20 years has been focussed on raising quality, sharing best practice and on providing the very best cutting-edge education to those who work on the front line of care and to those who lead our amazing care services. I have been humbled by the way that care providers have come to us to ask for support and guidance and never more so than in the pandemic. During these last two years my team and I have worked tirelessly to interpret guidance, ensure there is face to face (via Zoom) interactive education and hold the hands of you, the people who have been, day in day out, putting your own lives at risk.
This OBE is for Hertfordshire and for everyone who works in social care. I may have led the organisation that provided the support, but it is our care professionals who have embraced the offer and used the knowledge we have given them to care for peoples, mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles, sisters, brothers and sons and daughters.
I take this honour very seriously and will make sure I put it to good use, my mission is to professionalise the care sector, to stop people saying, ‘I am only a carer’ and to give them pride in their hard work and achievements. Our Care Professional Standards Academy is gaining momentum, we want everyone who works in care to join up and to proudly display their certificates and training passports. We have begun to get interest from other counties in the Academy and I will use my OBE to open doors so that care is seen and respected as a profession, a career of choice and the natural pathway for compassionate courageous people both in Hertfordshire and across the country. My mission, with the help of my OBE, is to make the term ‘Care Professional’ the standard way we talk about our amazing workforce.
I want to say thank you to those who put me forward for this honour, I want to say thank you to the amazing staff who have helped to grow HCPA and I want to say thank you to Hertfordshire County Council and all the staff who have supported our dream to make Hertfordshire a great county to receive care and I most importantly want to say thank you to all the care professionals out there who care enough to want to continue to achieve great things. Care in Hertfordshire is truly brilliant and I promise to continue to support you in any way I can – our care workforce is simply amazing and I am proud to be part of it. ‘
Congratulations on this fantastic and well-deserved recognition Sharon from all of your colleagues at HCPA.
We all wish our providers a very happy and safe 2022 and hope we will see an end to the pandemic. Everyone in Care has worked so hard!