HEALTH workers inTendring have be handed special awards for their work on an innovative dementia project.

Anglian Community Enterprise, which provides community services for the NHS in north Essex, scooped two national awards in the prestigious annual Philip Baxendale Awards.

Margaret Dewing and Kate Howard beat off competition from across the country to win the Employee Innovation Award for their work on a project called Dementia Doorway.

Their project aimed to show that a diagnosis of dementia was not the end of a patient’s life.

The company was highly commended in the cabinet office’s public service mutual category, which celebrates the most impressive group of employees to have spun out of the public sector into an employee-led mutual organization.

Anglian Community Enterprise managing director Lynne Woodcock, said: “Since we formed as a mutual organisation nearly two years ago, every member of staff has worked incredibly hard to help ACE achieve its objective of being a provider of quality, patient-driven community healthcare services.

“These awards demonstrate the innovation and drive of our staff and I would like to congratulate those award winners but equally all members of our staff for their efforts this year.”

The occasion also saw the company’s internal awards presented to the children’s speech and language team, the stroke early supported discharge team, Anne Smith, lead nurse at Green Elms surgery, board business manager Julie Young and nurses Jestin George and Maggie Pickett.

Special mentions were also given to James Foord and Ian Succamore, who resuscitated and saved a 91-year-old visitor who collapsed in a hospital corridor.

The event also saw presentations by staff on a number of subjects including making minor injury units at Clacton and Harwich hospitals more child-friendly.